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^ NEW PHILOSOPHY

OF HENRI BERGSON

By

EDOUARD LE ROY

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

VINCENT BENSON, M.A.

Late Scholar ofNew College, Oxford

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPALONDON: WILLIAMS & NORGATE

1913



COPYRIGHT, 1913,

BY

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

Published April, 1913

THE QUINN A BOOEN CO. PRESS

RAHWAY, N. J.



PREFACE

THIS little book is due to two articles published under the same title in the Revue des

Deux Mondes, 1st and 15th February 1912.

Their object was to present Mr. Bergson s

philosophy to the public at large, giving as

short a sketch as possible, and describing,

without too minute details, the general trend

of his movement. These articles I have here

reprinted intact. But I have added, in the

form of continuous notes, some additional

explanations on points which did not comewithin the scope of investigation in the origi

nal sketch.

I need hardly add that my work, though

thus far complete, does not in any way claim

to be a profound critical study. Indeed, sucha study, dealing with a thinker who has not

yet said his last word, would to-day be pre

mature. I have simply aimed at writing an

introduction which will make it easier to read

andunderstand Mr. Bergson

s

works, andiii



iv PREFACE

serve as a preliminary guide to those who

desire initiation in the new philosophy.

I have therefore firmly waived all the para

phernalia of technical discussions, and have

made no comparisons, learned or otherwise,

between Mr. Bergson s teaching and that of

older philosophies.

I can conceive no better method of mis

understanding the point at issue, I mean the

simple unity of productive intuition, than that

of pigeon-holing names of systems, collecting

instances of resemblance, making up analo

gies, and specifying ingredients. An original

philosophy is not meant to be studied as a

mosaic which takes to pieces, a compound

which analyzes, or a body which dissects. On

the contrary, it is by considering it as a living

act, not as a rather clever discourse, by ex

amining the peculiar excellence of its soul

rather than the formation of its body, that

the inquirer will succeed in understanding it.

Properly speaking, I have only applied to

Mr. Bergson the method which he himself

justifiably prescribes in a recent article

(Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale,

November 1911), the only method, in fact,

which is in all senses of the word fully"

ex

act." I shall none the less be glad if these



PREFACE v

brief pages can be of any interest to profes

sional philosophers, and have endeavored, as

far as possible, to allow them to trace, under

the concise formulae employed, the scheme

which I have refused to develop.

It has become evident to me that even to

day the interpretation of Mr. Bergson s posi

tion is in many cases full of faults, which it

would undoubtedly be worth while to assist

in removing. I may or may not have suc

ceeded in my attempt, but such, at any rate, is

the precise end I had in view.

In conclusion, I may say that I have not

had the honor of being Mr. Bergson s pupil;

and, at the time when I became acquainted

with his outlook, my own direct reflection on

science and life had already produced in me

similar trains of thought. I found in his

work the striking realization of a presenti

ment and a desire. This "correspondence,"

which I have not exaggerated, proved at once

a help and a hindrance to me in entering into

the exact comprehension of so profoundlyoriginal a doctrine. The reader will thus

understand that I think it in place to quote

my authority to him in the following lines

which Mr. Bergson kindly wrote me after

thepublication

ofthe articles reproduced

in



VI PREFACE

this volume: "Underneath and beyond the

method you have caught the intention and the

spirit. . . . Your study could not be more

conscientious or true to the original. As it

advances, condensation increases in a marked

degree: the reader becomes aware that the

explanation is undergoing a progressive in

volution similar to the involution by which

we determine the reality of Time. To pro

duce this feeling, much more has been neces

sary than a close study of my works: it has

required deep sympathy of thought, the

power, in fact, of rethinking the subject in

a personal and original manner. Nowhere

is this sympathy more in evidence than in

your concluding pages, where in a few words

you point out the possibilities of further de

velopments of the doctrine. In this direction

I should myself say exactly what you have

said."

PARIS, 28th March 1912.



PUBLISHERS NOTE

Mr. Benson has made his own translations of

passages quoted from M. Bergson s works, but

for the convenience of American readers the

references in the footnotes have been made to

apply to the authorized translations available in

this country, instead of to the French editions.



CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE . iii

GENERAL VIEWCHAPTER

I. METHOD . . . . . . . 1

Scope of Mr. Bergson s Philosophy. Material

and Authorities. Investigation of Common-sense. Value of Science. Perception Discussed.

Practical Life and Reality. Concepts and Symbolism. Intuition and Analysis. Use of Meta

phor. TheJPHS

II. TEACHING . . . . . . .60The Ego. Space and Number. Parallelism. Mr.

Bergson s View of Mind and Matter. Qualitative

Continuity. Memory.Real Duration Heter

ogeneous. Liberty and Determinism. Meaningof Reality. Evolution and Automatism. Tri

umph of Man/~The Vital Impulse. ObjectionsRefuted. Place of Religion in the New Philos

ophy.

ADDITIONAL EXPLANATIONS

I. MR. BERGSON S WORK AND THE GEN

ERAL, DIRECTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY

THOUGHT 126

Mathematics and Philosophy. The Inert and the

Living. Realism and Positivism. Mr. Bergsonand the Intuition of Duration.

ix



x CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

II. IMMEDIACY . . . . . . . 142

Necessity of Criticism. Utilitarianism of Common-sense. Perception of Immediacy.

III. THEORY OF PERCEPTION .... 156

Pure and Ordinary Perception. Kant s Position.

Relation of Perception to Matter. Complete

Experience.

IV. CRITIQUE OF LANGUAGE. . . .

167Dynamic Schemes. Dangers of Language. The

Eleatic Dialectic. Scientific Thought and the

Task of Intuition. Discussion of Change.

V. THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: DURA

TION AND LIBERTY - . . . . 185

States as Phases in Duration. The ScientificView of Time. Duration and Freedom. Lib

erty and Determinism m the LighlT of Mr.

Bergson s Philosophy.

VI. THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION: LIFE AND

MATTER . . . . . . 201

Evolution and Creation. Laws of Conservation

and Degradation. (Quantity and Quality. Sec

ondary Value of Matter.

VII. THE PROBLEM OF ^INOWLEDGE: ANALYSIS

AND INTUITION ..... 210

Difficulties of Kant s Position. Insufficiency of

Intelligence. Mr. Bergson and the Problem of

Reason. Geometric and Vital Types of Order.

VIII. CONCLUSION 223

Moral and Religious Problems. Mr. Bergson s

Position.

INDEX 233



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY

OF HENRI BERGSON

.



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY

OF HENRI BERGSON

GENERAL VIEW

I

METHOD

THERE is a thinker whose name is to-day on

everybody s lips, who is deemed by acknowl

edged philosophers worthy of comparison with

the greatest, and who, with his pen as well as

his brain, has overleapt all technical obstacles,

and won himself a reading both outside andinside the schools. Beyond any doubt, and by

common consent, Mr. Henri Bergson s work

will appear to future eyes among the most

characteristic, fertile, and glorious of our era.

It marks a never-to-be-forgotten date in

history; it opens up a phase of metaphysical

thought; it lays down a principle of develop

ment the limits of which are indeterminable;

and it is after cool consideration, with full

consciousness of the exact value ofwords,

that



2 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

we are able to pronounce the revolution which

it effects equal in importance to that effected

by Kant, or even by Socrates.

Everybody, indeed, has become aware of

this more or less clearly. Else how are we

to explain, except through such recognition,

the sudden striking spread of this new phi

losophy which, by its learned rigorism, pre

cluded the likelihood of so rapid a triumph?

Twenty years have sufficed to make its

results felt far beyond traditional limits: and

now its influence is alive and working from

one pole of thought to the other; and the

active leaven contained in it can be seen

already extending to the most varied and

distant spheres: in social and political spheres,

where from opposite points, and not without

certain abuses, an attempt is already being

made to wrench it in contrary directions; in

the sphere of religious speculation, where it

has been more legitimately summoned to a

distinguished, illuminative, and beneficent

career; in the sphere of pure science, where,

despite old separatist prejudices, the ideas

sown are pushing up here and there; and

lastly, in the sphere of art, where there are

indications that it is likely to help certain

presentiments, which have till now remained



METHOD 3

obscure, to become conscious of themselves.

The moment is favorable to a study of Mr.

Bergson s philosophy; but in the face of so

many attempted methods of employment,

some of them a trifle premature, the point

of paramount importance, applying Mr.

Bergson s own method to himself, is to study

his philosophy in itself, for itself, in its profound trend and its authenticated action,

without claiming to enlist it in the ranks of

any cause whatsoever.

Mr. Bergson s readers will undergo at al

most every page they read an intense and

singular experience. The curtain drawn be

tween ourselves and reality, enveloping every

thing includingourselves in its illusive folds,

seems of a sudden to fall, dissipated by en

chantment, and display to the mind depths of

light till then undreamt, in which reality it

self, contemplated face to face for the first

time, stands fully revealed. The revelation

is overpowering, and once vouchsafed will

never afterwards be forgotten.

Nothing can convey to the reader the effects

of this direct and intimate mental vision.

Everything which he thought he knew already



4 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

finds new birth and vigor in the clear light

of morning: on all hands, in the glow of

dawn, new intuitions spring up and openout; we feel them big with infinite conse

quences, heavy and saturated with life. Each

of them is no sooner blown than it appears

fertile forever. And yet there is nothing

paradoxical or disturbing in the novelty. It

is a reply to our expectation, an answer to

some dim hope. So vivid is the impression of

truth, that afterwards we are even ready to

believe we recognize the revelation as if we

had always darkly anticipated it in some mysterious twilight at the back of consciousness.

Afterwards, no doubt, in certain cases,

incertitude reappears, sometimes even decided

objections. The reader, who at first was under

amagic spell,

corrects histhought,

or at least

hesitates. What he has seen is still at bottom

so new, so unexpected, so far removed from

familiar conceptions. For this surging wave

of thought our mind contains none of those

ready-cutchannels which render

comprehension easy. But whether, in the long run, we

each of us give or refuse complete or partial

adhesion, all of us, at least, have received a

regenerating shock, an internal upheaval not

readily silenced: the network of our intellec-



METHOD 5

tual habits is broken ; henceforth a new leaven

works and ferments in us; we shall no longer

think as we used to think; and be we pupils

or critics, we cannot mistake the fact that we

have here a principle of integral renewal for

ancient philosophy and its old and timeworn

problems.

It is obviously impossible to sketch in briefall the aspects and all the wealth of so original

a work. Still less shall I be able to answer

here the many questions which arise. I must

decide to pass rapidly over the technical detail

ofclear, closely-argued,

andpenetrating

dis

cussions; over the scope and exactness of the

evidence borrowed from the most diverse posi

tive sciences; over the marvelous dexterity of

the psychological analysis; ovr the

a Style Which Can Pflll up wlmt. wnrrls pa.nnnt.

express. The solidity of the construction will

rioFBe evidenced in these pages, nor its austere

and subtle beauty. But what I do at all costs

wish to bring out, in shorter form, in this new

philosophy, is its directing idea and general

movement.

In such an undertaking, where the end is

to understand rather than to judge, criticism

ought to take second place. It is more profit

able to attempt to feel oneself into the heart



6 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

of the teaching, to relive its genesis, to per

ceive the principle of organic unity, to come

at the mainspring. Let our reading be a

course of meditation which we live. The only

true homage we can render to the masters of

thought consists in ourselves thinking, as far

as we can do so, in their train, under their

inspiration, and along the paths which they

have opened up.

In the case before us this road is landmarked

by several books which it will be sufficient to

study one after the other, and take successively

as the text of our reflections.

In 1889 Mr. Bergson made his appearance

with an Essay on the Immediate Data of Con-

sciousness.

This was his doctor s thesis. Taking up his

position inside the human personality, in its

inmost mind, he endeavored to lay hold of

the depths of life and free action in their com

monly overlooked and fugitive originality.

Some years later, in 1896, passing this time

to the externals of consciousness, the contactsurface between things and the ego, he pub

lished Matter and Memory, a masterly study

of perception and recollection, which he him

self put forward as an inquiry into the relation

betweenbody

and mind. In 1907 he followed



METHOD 7

with Creative Evolution,, in which the new

metaphysic was outlined in its full breadth,

and developed with a wealth of suggestion

and perspective opening upon the distances of

infinity; universal evolution, the meaning of

life, the nature of mind and matter, of intelli

gence and instinct, were the great problems

here treated, ending in a general critique of

knowledge and a completely original definition

of philosophy.

These will be our guides which we shall

carefully follow, step by step. It is not, I

must confess, without some apprehension thatI undertake the task of summing up so much

research, and of condensing into a few pages

so many and such new conclusions.

Mr. Bergson excels, even on points of least

significance,in

producingthe

feelingof un-

fathomed depths and infinite levels. Never

has anyone better understood how to fulfil

the philosopher s first task, in pointing out

the hidden mystery in everything. With him

we see all at once the concrete thickness and

inexhaustible extension of the most familiar

reality, which has always been before our eyes,

where before we were aware only of the ex

ternal film.

Do not imagine that this is simply a poetical



8 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

delusion. We must be grateful if the philos

opher uses exquisite language and writes in

a style which abounds in living images. These

are rare qualities. But let us avoid being

duped by a show of printed matter: these

unannotated pages are supported by positive

science submitted to the most minute in

spection. One day, in 1901, at the French

Philosophical Society, Mr. Bergson related the

genesis of Matter and Memory."

Twelve years or so before its appearance,

I had set myself the following problem:

What would be the teaching of the physiologyand pathology of to-day upon the ancient

question of the connection between physical

and moral to an unprejudiced mind, deter

mined to forget all speculation in which it has

indulged on this point, determined also to

neglect, in the enunciations of philosophers,

all that is not pure and simple statement of

fact ? I set myself to solve the problem, and

I very soon perceived that the question was

susceptible of a provisional solution, and evenof precise formulation, only if restricted to

the problem of memory. In memory itself

I was forced to determine bounds which I had

afterwards to narrow considerably. After

confining myselfto the recollection of words



METHOD 9

I saw that the problem, as stated, was still

too broad, and that, to put the question

in its most precise and interesting form, I

should have to substitute the recollection

of the sound of words. The literature on

aphasia is enormous. I took five years to

sift it. And I arrived at this conclusion,

that between the psychological fact and its

corresponding basis in the brain there must

be a relation which answers to none of

the ready-made concepts furnished us by

philosophy."

Certain characteristicsof

Mr. Bergsons

manner will be remarked throughout: his

provisional effort of forgetfulness to recreate a

new and untrammeled mind; his mixture of

positive inquiry and bold invention; his

stupendous reading;his vast

pioneer

work

carried on with indefatigable patience; his

constant correction by criticism, informed of

the minutest details and swift to follow up

each of them at every turn. With a problem

which would at first have seemed secondary

and incomplete, but which reappears as the

subject deepens and is thereby metamor

phosed, he connects his entire philosophy; and

so well does he blend the whole and breathe

upon it the breath of life that the final state-



10 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

ment leaves the reader with an impression of

sovereign ease.

Examples will be necessary to enable us,

even to a feeble extent, to understand this

proceeding better. But before we come to

examples, a preliminary question requires

examination. In the preface to his first Essay

Mr. Bergson defined the principle of a

method which was afterwards to reappear in

its identity throughout his various works; and

we must recall the terms he employed.

We are forced to express ourselves in

words, and we think, most often, in space.

To put it another way, language compels us

to establish between our ideas the same clear

and precise distinctions, and the same break

in continuity, as between material objects.

This assimilation is useful in practical life andnecessary in most sciences. But we are right

in asking whether the insuperable difficulties

of certain philosophical problems do not arise

from the fact that we persist in placing non-

spatial phenomena next one another in space,and whether, if we did away with the vulgar

illustrations round which we dispute, we

should not sometimes put an end to the

dispute."

That is tosay,

it is stated to be the



METHOD 11

philosopher s duty from the outset to renounce

the usual forms of analytic and synthetic

thought, and to achieve a direct intuitional

effort which shall put him in immediate

contact with reality. Without doubt it is this

question of method which demands our first

attention. It is the leading question. Mr.

Bergson himself presents his works as

"

es

says"

which do not aim at"

solving the great

est problems all at once," but seek merely"

to define the method and disclose the possi

bility of applying it on some essentialpoints."

It is also a delicatequestion,

for it dominates

all the rest, and decides whether we shall

fully understand what is to follow.

We must therefore pause here a moment.

To direct us in this preliminary study we have

an admirable Introduction to Metaphysics,

which appeared as an article in the Meta

physical and Moral Review (January 1903) :

a short but marvelously suggestive memoire,

constituting the best preface to the reading of

*the books themselves. We may say in pass

ing, that we should be grateful to Mr. Berg-

son if he would have it bound in volume form,

along with some other articles which are

scarcely to be had at all to-day.

1 Preface to Creative Evolution.



12 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

II

Every philosophy, prior to taking shape in

a group of co-ordinated theses, presents itself,

in its initial stage, as an attitude, a frame of

mind, a method. Nothing can be more im

portant than to study this starting-point, this

elementary act of direction and movement, if

we wish afterwards to arrive at the precise

shade of meaning of the subsequent teaching.

Here is really the fountain-head of thought;

it is here that the form of the future system

is determined, and here that contact with

reality takes effect.

The last point, particularly, is vital. To

return to the direct view of things beyond all

figurative symbols, to descend into the inmost

depths of being, to watch the throbbing life

in its pure state, and listen to the secret

rhythm of its inmost breath, to measure it, at

least so far as measurement is possible, has al

ways been the philosopher s ambition ;and the

new philosophy has not departed from thisideal. But in what light does it regard its

task? That is the first point to clear up. For

the problem is complex, and the goal distant.* We are made as much, and more, for

action than forthought," says

Mr.Bergson;



METHOD 13

"

or rather, when we follow our natural im

pulse, it is to act that we think." And again,"

What we ordinarily call a fact is not reality

such as it would appear to an immediate

intuition, but an adaptation of reality to

practical interests and the demands of social

life."

2

Hence the question which takes pre

cedence of all others is: to distinguish in our

common representation of the world, the fact in

its true sense from the combinations which we

have introduced in view of action and language.

Now, to rediscover nature in her fresh

springs of reality, it is not sufficient to abandonthe images and conceptions invented by human

initiative; still less is it sufficient to fling our

selves into the torrent of brute sensations. Byso doing we are in danger of dissolving our

thought in dream or quenching it in night.

Above all, we are in danger of committal to

a path which it is impossible to follow. The

philosopher is not free to begin the work of

knowledge again upon other planes, with a

mind which would be adequate to the new andvirgin issue of a simple writ of oblivion.

At the time when critical reflection begins,

we have already been long engaged in action

1 Creative Evolution, p. 297.

*

Matter and Memory, p.238.



14 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

and science ; by the training of individual life,

as

byhereditary and racial

experience,

our

faculties of perception and conception, our

senses and our understanding, have contracted

habits, which are by this time unconscious

and instinctive; we are haunted by all kinds

of ideas and principles, so familiar to-day that

they even pass unobserved. But what is it

all worth?

Does it, in its present state, help us to know

the nature of a disinterested intuition ?

Nothing but a methodical examination of

consciousness can tell us that;and it will take

more than a renunciation of explicit knowl

edge to recreate in us a new mind, capable of

grasping the bare fact exactly as it is: what

we require is perhaps a penetrating reform, a

kind of conversion.

The rational and perceptive function we

term our intelligence emerges from darkness

through a slowly lifting dawn. During this

twilight period it has lived, worked, acted,

fashioned and informed itself. On the thresh

old of philosophical speculation it is full of

more or less concealed beliefs, which are

literally prejudices, and branded with a secret

mark influencing its every movement. Here

is an actual situation. Exemption from it is



METHOD 15

beyond anyone s province. Whether we will

or no, we are from the beginning of our in

quiry immersed in a doctrine which disguises

nature to us, and already at bottom constitutes

a complete metaphysic. This we term com

mon-sense, and positive science is itself only

an extension and refinement of it. What is

the value of this work performed without clear

consciousness or critical attention? Does it

bring us into true relation with things, into

relation with pure consciousness?

This is our first and inevitable doubt, which

requires solution.

But it would be a quixotic proceeding first

to make a void in our mind, and afterwards to

admit into it, one by one, after investigation,

such and such a concept, or such and such a

principle. The illusion of the clean sweepand total reconstruction can never be too

vigorously condemned.

Is it from the void that we set out to think?

Do we think in void, and with nothing? Com

mon ideas ofnecessity

form the

groundworkfor the broidery of our advanced thought.

Further, even if we succeeded in our possible

task, should we, in so doing, have corrected

the causes of error which are to-day graven

upon the very structure of our intelligence,



16 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

such as our past life has made it? These

errors would not cease to act imperceptibly

upon the work of revision intended to apply

the remedy.

It is from within, by an effort of immanent

purgation, that the necessary reform must be

brought about. And philosophy s first task

is to institute critical reflection upon the ob

scure beginnings of thought, with a view to

shedding light upon its spontaneous virgin con

dition, but without any vain claim to lift it out

of the current in which it is actually plunged.

One conclusion is already plain : the ground

work of common-sense is sure, but the form is

suspicious.

In common-sense is contained, at any rate

virtually and in embryo, all that can ever be

attained of reality, for reality is verification,

not construction.

Everything has its starting-point in con

struction and verification. Thus philosophical

research can only be a conscious and deliberate

return to the facts of primal intuition. But

common-sense, being prepossessed in a practi

cal direction, has doubtless subjected these

facts to a process of interested alteration,

which is artificial in proportion to the labor

bestowed. Such is Mr. Bergson s fundamental



METHOD 17

hypothesis, and it is far-reaching."

Many

metaphysical difficulties probably arise from

our habit of confounding speculation and prac

tice or of pushing an idea in the direction of

utility, when we think we fathom it in theory ;

or, lastly, of employing in thought the forms

of action."

The work of reform will consist therefore

in freeing our intelligence from its utilitarian

habits, by endeavoring at the outset to be

come clearly conscious of them.

Notice how far presumption is in favor of

our hypothesis. Whether we regard organic

life in the genesis and preservation of the

individual, or in the evolution of species, we

see its natural direction to be towards utility:

but the effort of thought comes after the effort

of life; it is not added from outside, it is the

continuance and the flower of the former effort.

Must we not expect from this that it will pre

serve its former habits? And what do we

actually observe? The first gleam of human

intelligence in prehistoric times is revealed tous by an industry; the cut flint of the primi

tive caves marks the first stage of the road

which was one day to end in the most sublime

philosophies. Again, every science has begun1

Preface to Matter and Memory. First edition.



18 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

by practical arts. Indeed, our science of to

day, however disinterested it may have become,

remains none the less in close relation with the

demands of our action; it permits us to speak

of and to handle things rather than to see

them in their intimate and profound nature.

Analysis, when applied to our operations of

knowledge, shows us that our understanding

parcels out, arrests, and quantifies, whereas

reality, as it appears to immediate intuition,

is a moving series, a flux of blended qualities.

That is to say, our understanding solidifies

all that it touches. Have we not here exactly

the essential postulates of action and speech?

To speak, as to act, we must have separable

elements, terms and objects which remain inert

while the operation goes on, maintaining be

tween themselves the constant relations which

find their most perfect and ideal presentment

in mathematics.

Everything tends, then, to incline us to

wards the hypothesis in question. Let us re

gard it henceforward as expressing a fact.

The forms of knowledge elaborated by

common-sense were not originally intended

to allow us to see reality as it is.

Their task was rather, and remains so, to

enable us to grasp its practical aspect. It is



METHOD 19

for that they are made, not for philosophical

speculation.

Now these forms nevertheless have existed

in us as inveterate habits, soon becoming

unconscious, even when we have reached the

point of desiring knowledge for its own sake.

But in this new stage they preserve the bias

of their original utilitarian function, and carry

this mark with them everywhere, leaving it

upon the fresh tasks which we are fain to

make them accomplish.

An inner reform is therefore imperative ,

to-day, if we are to succeed in unearthing and

sifting, in our perception of nature, under the

veinstone of practical symbolism, the true in

tuitional content.

This attempt at return to the standpoint of

pure contemplation and disinterested experience is a task very different from the task of

science. It is one thing to regard more and

more or less and less closely with the eyes

made for us by utilitarian evolution: it is

another to labor at remaking for ourselves

eyes capable of seeing, in order to see, and

not in order to live.

Philosophy understood in this manner and

we shall see more and more clearly as we go

on that there is no otherlegitimate

method of



20 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

understanding it demands from us an almost

violent act of reform and conversion.

The mind must turn round upon itself, sinvert the habitual direction of its thought,

climb the hill down which its instinct towards

action has carried it, and go to seek experience

at its source,"

above the critical bend where

it inclines towards our practical use and be

comes, properly speaking, human experi

ence." In short, by a twin effort of criticism

and expansion, it must pass outside common-

sense and synthetic understanding to return to

pure intuition.

Philosophy consists in reliving the imme

diate over again, and in interpreting our ra

tional science and everyday perception by its

light. That, at least, is the first stage. We

shall find afterwards that that is notall.

Here is a genuinely new conception of

philosophy. Here, for the first time, philos

ophy is made specifically distinct from science,

yet remains no less positive.

What sciencereally

does is topreserve

the

general attitude of common-sense, with its ap-

paratus of forms and principles.

It is true that science develops and perfects

it, refines and extends it, and even now and

1

Matterand

Memory, p. 241.



METHOD 21

again corrects it. But science does not change

either the direction or the essential steps.

In this philosophy, on the contrary, what is

at first suspected and finally modified, is the

setting of the points before the journey begins.

Not that, in saying so, we mean to condemn

science; but we must recognize its just limits.

The methods of science proper are in their

place and appropriate, and lead to a knowledge

which is true (though still symbolical), so long

as the object studied is the world of practical

action, or, to put it briefly, the world of inert

matter.

But soul, life, and activity escape it, and

yet these are the spring and ultimate basis of

everything: and it is the appreciation of this

fact, with what it entails, that is new. And

yet, new as Mr. Bergson s conception of phi

losophy may deservedly appear, it does not

any the less, from another point of view, de

serve to be styled classic and traditional.

What it really defines is not so much a

particular philosophy as philosophy itself, in

its original function.

Everywhere in history we find its secret

current at its task.

All great philosophers have had glimpses of

it, and employed it in moments of discovery.



22 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

Only as a general rule they have not clearly

recognized what they were doing, and so have

soon turned aside.

But on this point I cannot insist without

going into lengthy detail, and am obliged to

refer the reader to the fourth chapter of

Creative Evolution, where he will find the

whole question dealt with.

One remark, however, has still to be made.

Philosophy, according to Mr. Bergson s con

ception, implies and demands time; it does

not aim at completion all at once, for the

mental reform in question is of the kind which

requires gradual fulfilment. The truth which

it involves does not set out to be a non-tem

poral essence, which a sufficiently powerful

genius would be able, under pressure, to per

ceive in its entirety at one view; and that

again seems to be very new.

I do not, of course, wish to abuse systems

of philosophy. Each of them is an experience

of thought, a moment in the life of thought,

a method of exploring reality, a reagent whichreveals an aspect. Truth undergoes analysis

into systems as does light into colors.

But the mere name system calls up the

static idea of a finished building. Here t;here

is

nothingof the kind.

The new philosophy



METHOD 23

desires to be a proceeding as much as, and

even more than, to be a system. It insists on

being lived as well as thought. It demands

that thought should work at living its true

life, an inner life related to itself, effective,

active, and creative, but not on that account

directed towards external action."

And,"

says Mr. Bergson,"

it can only be constructed

by the collective and progressive effort of

many thinkers, and of many observers, com

pleting, correcting, and righting one another."1

Let us see how it begins, and what is its

generating act.

in

How are we to attain the immediate?

How are we to realize this perception of pure

fact which we stated to be the philosopher s

first step?

Unless we can clear up this doubt, the end

proposed will remain to our gaze an abstract

and lifeless ideal. This is, then, the point

which requires instant explanation. For there

is a serious difficulty in which the very em

ployment of the word"

immediate"

might

lead us astray.

The immediate, in the sense which concerns

1

Preface to Creative Evolution.



24 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

us, is not at all, or at least is no longer for

us the passive experience, the indefinable

something which we should inevitably receive,

provided we opened our eyes and abstained

from reflection.

As a matter of fact, we cannot abstain from

reflection: reflection is to-day part of our

very vision; it comes into play as soon as we

open our eyes. So that, to come on the trail

of the immediate, there must be effort and

work. How are we to guide this effort? In

what will this work consist? By what sign

shall we be able to recognize that the result

has been obtained?

These are the questions to be cleared up.

Mr. Bergson speaks of them chiefly in con

nection with the realities of consciousness, or,

more generally speaking, of life. And it is

here, in fact, that the consequences are most

weighty and far-reaching. We shall need

to refer to them again in detail. But to

simplify my explanation, I will here choose

another example: that of inert matter, of the

perception on which the physical is based.

It is in this case that the divergence between

common perception and pure perception, how

ever real it may be, assumes least proportions.

Thereforeit

appears mostin

placein the



METHOD 25

sketch I desire to trace of an exceedingly

complex work, where I can only hope, evi

dently, to indicate the main lines and general

direction.

We readily believe that when we cast our

eyes upon surrounding objects, we enter into

them unresistingly and apprehend them all

at once in their intrinsic nature. Perception

would thus be nothing but simple passive

registration. But nothing could be more

untrue, if we are speaking of the perception

which we employ without profound criticism

in the course of our daily life. What we here

take to be pure fact is, on the contrary, the

last term in a highly complicated series of

mental operations. And this term contains

as much of us as of things.

In fact, all concrete perception comes upfor analysis as an indissoluble mixture of con-

v

struction and fact, in which the fact is only

revealed through the construction, and takes

on its complexion. We all know by experi

ence how incapable the uneducated person is

of explaining the simple appearance of the

least fact, without embodying a crowd of false

interpretations. We know to a less extent,

but it is also true, that the most enlightened

and adroit person proceeds in just the same



26 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

manner: his interpretation is better, but it is

still interpretation.

That is why accurate observation is so

difficult; we see or we do not see, we notice

such and such an aspect, we read this or that,

according to our state of consciousness at the

time, according to the direction of the inves

tigation on which we are engaged.

Who was it defined art as nature seen

through a mind? Perception, too, is an art.

This art has its processes, its conventions,

and its tools. Go into a laboratory and study

one of those complex instruments which makeour senses finer or more powerful; each of

them is literally a sheaf of materialized the

ories, and by means of it all acquired science

is brought to bear on each new observation of

the student. In exactly the same way our

organs of sense are actual instruments con

structed by the unconscious work of the mind

in the course of biological evolution; they too

sum up and give concrete form and expres

sion to a system of enlightening theories. Butthat is not all. The most elementary psychol

ogy shows us the amount of thought, in the

correct sense of the term, recollection, or in

ference, which enters into what we should be

tempted to call pure perception.



METHOD 27

Establishment of fact is not the simple

reception

of the faithful

imprint

of that fact;

it is invariably interpreted, systematized, and

placed in pre-existing forms which constitute

veritable theoretical frames. That is why the

child has to learn to perceive. There is an

education of the senses which he acquires by

long training. One day, with the aid of habit,

he will almost cease to see things : a few lines,

a few glimpses, a few simple signs noted in a

brief passing glance, will enable him to recog

nize them; and he will hardly retain any more

of reality than its schemes and symbols."

Perception," says Mr. Bergson on this

subject,"

becomes in the end only an op

portunity of recollection."

All concrete perception, it is true, is di

rected less upon the present than the past.

The part of pure perception in it is small,

and immediately covered and almost buried

by the contribution of memory.

This infinitesimal part acts as a bait. It is

a summons to recollection, challenging us to

extract from our previous experience, and

construct with our acquired wealth a system

of images which permits us to read the experi

ence of the moment.

1 Matter and Memory, p. 71,



28 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

With our scheme of interpretation thus

constituted we encounter the few fugitive

traits which we have actually perceived. If

the theory we have elaborated adapts itself,

and succeeds in accounting for, connecting,

and making sense of these traits, we shall

finally have a perception properly so called.

Perception then, in the usual sense of the

word, is the resolution of a problem, the veri

fication of a theory.

Thus are explained"

errors of the senses,"

which are in reality errors of interpretation.

Thus too, and in the same manner, we have

the explanation of dreams.

Let us take a simple example. When you

read a book, do you spell each syllable, one by

one, to group the syllables afterwards into

words, and the words into phrases, thus

traveling from print to meaning? Not at

all: you grasp a few letters accurately, a few

downstrokes in their graphical outline; then

you guess the remainder, traveling in the re

verse direction, from a probable meaning to

the print which you are interpreting. This

is what causes mistakes in reading, and the

well-known difficulty in seeing printing errors.

This observation is confirmed by curious

experiments. Write some everyday phrase



METHOD 29

or other on a blackboard; let there be a few

intentional mistakes here and there, a letter

or two altered, or left out. Place the words

in a dark room in front of a person who, of

course, does not know what has been written.

Then turn on the light without allowing the

observer sufficient time to spell the writing.

In spite of this, he will in most cases read

the entire phrase, without hesitation or

difficulty.

He has restored what was missing, or cor

rected what was at fault.

Now, ask him what letters he is certain he

saw, and you will find he will tell you an

omitted or altered letter as well as a letter

actually written.

The observer then thinks he sees in broad

light a letter which is not there, if that letter,

in virtue of the general sense, ought to appear

in the phrase. But you can go further, and

vary the experiment.

Suppose we write the word"

tumult"

cor

rectly. After doing so, to direct the memoryof the observer into a certain trend of recol

lection, call out in his ear, during the short

time the light is turned on, another word of

different meaning, for example, the word"

railway."



30 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

The observer will read"

tunnel"

;that is

to say, a word, the graphical outline of which

is like that of the written word, but connected

in sense with the order of recollection called

up.

In this mistake in reading, as in the spon

taneous correction of the previous experiment,

we see very clearly that perception is always

the fulfilment of guesswork.

It is the direction of this work that we are

concerned to determine.

According to the popular idea perception

has a completely speculative interest: it is

pure knowledge. Therein lies the funda

mental mistake.

Notice first of all how much more probable

it is, a priori, that the work of perception,

just as any other natural and spontaneous

work, should have a utilitarian signification."

Life," says Mr. Bergson with justice,

"

is

the acceptance from objects of nothing but

the useful impression, with the response of the

appropriate reactions."

1

And this view receives striking objective

confirmation if, with the author of Matter and

Memory, we follow the progress of the per

ceptive functions along the animal series from

1

Laughter, p. 151.



METHOD 31

the protoplasm to the higher vertebrates; or

if, with him, we analyze the task of the body,

and discover that the nervous system is mani

fested in its very structure as, before all, an

instrument of action. Have we not already

besides proof of this in the fact that each of

us always appears in his own eyes to occupy

the center of the world he perceives?

The Riquet of Anatole France voices Mr.

Bergson s view:"

I am always in the center

of everything, and men and beasts and things,

for or against me, range themselves around."

But direct analysis leads us still more

plainly to the same conclusion.

Let us take the perception of bodies. It

is easy to show and I regret that I cannot

here reproduce Mr. Bergson s masterly dem

onstration that the division of matter into

distinct objects with sharp outlines is pro

duced by a selection of images which is com

pletely relative to our practical needs.1

The distinct outlines which we assign to

anobject, and which bestow upon it its indi

viduality, are nothing but the graph of a

certain kind of influence which we should be

able to employ at a certain point in space: it

is the plan of our future actions which is

submitted to oureyes,

as in amirror,

when



32 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

we perceive the surfaces and edges of things.

Remove this action, and in consequence the

high roads which it makes for itself in advance

by perception, in the web of reality, and the

individuality of the body will be reabsorbed

in the universal interaction which is without

doubt reality itself." Which is tantamount

to saying that"

rough bodies are cut in the

material of nature by a perception of which

the scissors follow, in some sort, the dotted

line along which the action wouldpass."

l

Bodies independent of common experience

do not then appear, to an attentive criticism,

as veritable realities which would have an

existence in themselves. They are only

centers of co-ordination for our actions. Or,

if you prefer it,

"

our needs are so many

shafts of light which, when played upon the

continuity of perceptible qualities, produce in

them the outline of distinct bodies." Does

not science too, after its own fashion, resolve

the atom into a center of intersecting relations,

which finally extend by degrees to the entireuniverse in an indissoluble interpenetration?

A qualitative continuity, imperceptibly

shaded off, over which pass quivers that here

1Creative Evolution, p. 12.

2

Matter and Memory, p. 262.



METHOD 33

and there converge, is the image by which we

are forced to recognize a superior degree of

reality.

But is this perceptible material, this quali

tative continuity, the pure fact in matter?

Not yet. Perception, we said just now, is

always in reality complicated by memory.

There is more truth in this than we had seen.

Reality is not a motionless spectrum, extend

ing to our view its infinite shades; it might

rather be termed a leaping flame in the

spectrum. All is in passage, in process of

becoming.On this flux consciousness concentrates at

long intervals, each time condensing into one"

quality"

an immense period of the inner

history of things."

In just this way the

thousand successive positions of a runner

contract into one single symbolic attitude,

which our eye perceives, which art reproduces,

and which becomes for everybody the repre

sentation of a manrunning."

*

In the same way again, a red light, con

tinuing one second, embodies such a large

number of elementary pulsations that it would

take 25,000 years of our time to see its dis

tinct passage. From here springs the sub-

1Matter and Memory, p. 277.



34 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

jectivity of our perception. The different

qualities correspond, roughly speaking, to the

different rhythms of contraction or dilution,

to the different degrees of inner tension in

the perceiving consciousness.

Pushing the case to its limits, and imagining

a complete expansion, matter would resolve

into colorless disturbances, and become the"

pure matter"

of the natural philosopher.

Let us now unite in one single continuity

the different periods of the preceding dialectic.

Vibration, qualities, and bodies are none of

them reality by themselves; but all the samethey are part of reality. And absolute reality

would be the whole of these degrees and

moments, and many others as well no doubt.

Or rather, to secure absolute intuition of

matter, we should have onthe one

handto

get rid of all that our practical needs have

constructed, restore on the other all the

effective tendencies they have extinguished,

follow the complete scale of qualitative con

centrations and dilutions, andpass, by

a kind

of sympathy, into the incessantly moving play

of all the possible innumerable contractions or

resolutions; with the result that in the end

we should succeed, by a simultaneous view as

it were, in grasping, according to their in-



METHOD 35

finitely various modes, the phases of this mat

ter which, though at present latent, admit of"

perception."

Thus, in the case before us, absolute knowl

edge is found to be the result of integral ex

perience; and though we cannot attain the

term, we see at any rate in what direction we

should have to work to reach it.

Now it must be stated that our realizable

knowledge is at every moment partial and

limited rather than exterior and relative, for

our effective perception is related to matter in

itself as the part to the whole. Our least

perceptions are actually based on pure per

ception, and"

we are aware of the elementary

disturbances which constitute matter, in the

perceptible quality in which they suffer con

traction,as we are aware of the

beatingof

our heart in the general feeling that we have

ofliving."

x

But the preoccupation of practical action,

coming between reality and ourselves, pro

duces the fragmentary world of common-

sense, much as an absorbing medium resolves

into separate rays the continuous spectrum of^

a luminous body; whilst the rhythm of dura-

1 The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific

Methods, 7th July 1910.



36 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

tion, and the degree of tension peculiar to our

consciousness, limit us to the apprehension of

certain qualities only.

What then have we to do to progress to

wards absolute knowledge? Not to quit ex

perience: quite the contrary; but to extend it

and diversify it by science, while, at the same

time, by criticism, we correct in it the dis

turbing effects of action, and finally quicken

all the results thus obtained by an effort

of sympathy which will make us familiar

with the object until we feel its profound

throbbing and its inner wealth.

In connection with this last vital point,

which is decisive, call to mind a celebrated

page of Sainte-Beuve where he defines his

method: "Enter into your author, make

yourself at home in him, produce him underhis different aspects, make him live, move,

and speak as he must have done; follow him

to his fireside and in his domestic habits, as

closely as you can. . . .

"

Study him, turn him round and round,ask him questions at your leisure; place him

before you. . . . Every feature will appear

in its turn, and take the place of the man

himself in this expression. . . .

" An individualreality

will

graduallyblend



METHOD 37

with and become incarnate in the vague,

abstract, and general type. . . . There is our

man. . . ." Yes, that is exactly what we want:

it could not be better put. Transpose this

page from the literary to the metaphysical

order, and you have intuition, as defined by

Mr. Bergson. You have the return to im

mediacy.

But a new problem then arises: Is not our

intuition of immediacy in danger of remain

ing inexpressible? For our language has been

formed in view of practical life, not of pure

knowledge.

rv

The immediate perception of reality is not

all; we have still to translate this perception

into intelligible language, into a connectedchain of concepts; failing which, it would

seem, we should not have knowledge in the

strict sense of the word, we should not have

truth.

Without language, intuition, supposingit

came to birth, would remain intransmissible

and incommunicable, and would perish in a

solitary cry. By language alone are we en

abled to submit it to a positive test: the letter

is the ballast of the mind, the

bodywhich



38 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

allows it to act, and in acting to scatter the

unreal delusions of dream.

The act of pure intuition demands so great

an inner tension from thought that it can only

be very rare and very fugitive: a few rapid

gleams here and there; and these dawning

glimpses must be sustained, and afterwards

united, and that again is the work of language.

But while language is thus necessary, no

less necessary is a criticism of ordinary

language, and of the methods, familiar to the

understanding. These forms of reflected

knowledge, these processes of analysis really

convey secretly all the postulates of practical

action. But it is imperative that language

should translate, not betray; that the body

of formulae should not stifle the soul of intui

tion. We shall see in what the work of

reform and conversion imposed on the phi

losopher precisely consists.

The attitude of the ordinary proceedings of

common thought can be stated in a few words.

Place the object studied before yourself as anexterior

"thing."Then place yourself out

side it, in perspective, at points of vantage on

a circumference, whence you can only see the

object of your investigation at a distance, with

such interval as would be sufficient for the



METHOD 39

contemplation of a picture; in short, move

round the object instead of entering boldly

into it. But these proceedings lead to what

I shall term analysis by concepts; that is to

say, the attempt to resolve all reality into

general ideas.

What are concepts and abstract ideas really,

but distant and simplified views, species of

model drawings, giving only a few summaryfeatures of their object, which vary according

to direction and angle? By means of them

we claim to determine the object from out

side, as if, in order to know it, it were suffi

cient to enclose it in a system of logical sides

and angles.

And perhaps in this way we do really grasp

it, perhaps we do establish its precise de

scription, but we do not penetrateit.

Concepts translate relations resulting from

comparisons by which each object is finally

expressed as a function of what it is not.

They dismember it, divide it up piece by

piece, and mount it in various frames.

Theylay hold of it only by ends and corners, by

resemblances and differences. Is not that

obviously what is done by the converting

theories which explain the soul by the body,

life by matter, quality by movements, space



40 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

itself by pure number? Is not that what is

done generally by all criticisms, all doctrines

which connect one idea to another, or to a

group of other ideas?

In this way we reach only the surface of

things, the reciprocal contacts, mutual inter

sections, and parts common, but not the

organic unity nor the inner essence.

In vain we multiply our points of view, our

perspectives and plane projections: no accu

mulation of this kind will reconstruct the

concrete solid. We can pass from an object

directly perceived to the pictures which rep

resent it, the prints which represent the pic

tures, the scheme representing the prints, be

cause each stage contains less than the one

before, and is obtained from it by simple

diminution.

But, inversely, you may take all the schemes,

prints, pictures you like supposing that it is

not absurd to conceive as given what is by

nature interminable and inexhaustible, lending

itself to indefinite enumeration and endless

development and multiplicity but you will

never recompose the profound and original

unity of the source.

How, by forcing yourself to seek the object

outside itself, where it certainly is not, except



METHOD 41

in echo and reflection, would you ever find its

intimate and specific reality? You are but

condemning yourself to symbolism, for one"

thing"

can only be in another symbolically.

To go further still, your knowledge of

things will remain irremediably relative, rela

tive to the symbols selected and the points of

view adopted. Everything will happen as in

a movement of which the appearance and

formula vary with the spot from which you re

gard it, with the marks to which you relate it.

Absolute revelation is only given to the man

who passes into the object, flings himself uponits stream, and lives within its rhythm. The

thesis which maintains the inevitable rela

tivity of all human knowledge originates

mainly from the metaphors employed to de

scribe the act of knowledge. The subject

occupies this point, the object that; how are

we to span the distance? Our perceptory

organs fill the interval; how are we to grasp

anything but what reaches us in the receiver

at the end of the wire?The mind itself is a projecting lantern

playing a shaft of light on nature; how should

it do otherwise than tint nature its own color?

But these difficulties all arise out of the

spatial metaphors employed;and these meta-



42 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

phors in their turn do little but illustrate and

translate the common method of analysis by

concepts: and this method is essentially regu

lated by the practical needs of action and

language.

The philosopher must adopt an attitude

entirely inverse; not keep at a distance from

things, but listen in a manner to their inward

breathing, and, above all, supply the effort of

sympathy by which he establishes himself in

the object, becomes on intimate terms with it,

tunes himself to its rhythm, and, in a word,

lives it. There is really nothing mysterious

or strange in this.

Consider your daily judgments in matters

of art, profession, or sport.

Between knowledge by theory and knowl

edge by experience, between understanding

by external analogy and perception by pro

found intuition, what difference and diver

gence there is!

Who has absolute knowledge of a machine,

the student who analyzes it in mechanical

theorems, or the engineer who has lived in

comradeship with it, even to sharing the

physical sensation of its labored or easy work

ing, who feels the play of its inner muscles, its

likes and dislikes, who notes its movements



METHOD 43

and the task before it, as the machine itself

would do were it conscious, for whom it has

become an extension of his own body, a new

sensori-motor organ, a group of prearranged

gestures and automatic habits?

The student s knowledge is more useful to

the builder, and I do not wish to claim that

we should ever neglect it; but the only true

knowledge is that of the engineer. And what

I have just said does not concern material

objects only. Who has absolute knowledge

of religion, he who analyzes it in psychology,

sociology, history, and metaphysics, or he

who, from within, by a living experience, par

ticipates in its essence and holds communion

with its duration?

But the external nature of the knowledge

obtained by conceptual analysis is only its

least fault. There are others still more serious.

1 If concepts actually express what is com

mon, general, unspecific, what should make

us feel the need of recasting them when we

applythem to a

new object?Do not their ground, their utility, and

their interest exactly consist in sparing us

this labor?

We regard them as elaborated once for

all. They are building-material,ready-hewn



44 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

blocks, which we have only to bring together.

They are atoms, simple elements a mathe

matician would say prime factors capable

of associating with infinity, but without un

dergoing any inner modification in contact

with it. They admit linkage; they can be at

tached externally, but they leave the aggre

gate as they went into it.

Juxtaposition and arrangement are the

geometrical operations which typify the work

of knowledge in such a case; or else we

must fall back on metaphors from some

mental chemistry, such as proportioning and

combination.

In all cases, the method is still that

of alignment and blending of pre-existent

concepts.

Now the mere fact of proceeding thus is

equivalent to setting up the concept as a

symbol of an abstract class. That being done,

explanation of a thing is no more than show

ing it in the intersection of several classes,

partaking of each of them in definite propor

tions: which is the same as considering it

sufficiently expressed by a list of general

frames into which it will go. The unknown

is then, on principle, and in virtue of this

theory, referred to the already known; and it



METHOD 45

thereby becomes impossible ever to grasp any

true novelty or any irreducible originality.

On principle, once more, we claim to re

construct nature with pure symbols; and it

thereby becomes impossible ever to reach its

concrete reality,

"

the invisible and present

soul."

This intuitional coinage in fixed standard

concepts, this creation of an easily handled

intellectual cash, is no doubt of evident

practical utility. For knowledge in the usual

sense of the word is not a disinterested opera

tion; it consists in finding out what profit

we can draw from an object, how we are to

conduct ourselves toward it, what label we

can suitably attach to it, under what already

known class it comes, to what degree it is

deserving of this or that title which determinesan attitude we must take up, or a step we

must perform. Our end is to place the object

in its approximate class, having regard to

advantageous employment or to everyday

language. Then, and only then, we find ourpigeon-holes all ready-made; and the same

parcel of reagents meets all cases. A universal

catechism is here in existence to meet every

research; its different clauses define so many

unshifting pointsof view, from which we



46 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

regard each object, and our study is subse

quently limited to applying a kind of nomen

clature to the preconstructed frames.

Once again the philosopher has to proceed

in exactly the opposite direction. He has

not to confine himself to ready-made business

concepts, of the ordinary kind, suits cut to an

average model, which fit nobody because they

almost fit everybody; but he has to work to

measure, incessantly renew his plant, con

tinually recreate his mind, and meet each new

problem with a fresh adaptive effort. Hemust not go from concepts to things, as if

each of them were only the cutting-point of

several concurrent generalities, an ideal cen

ter of intersecting abstractions; on the con

trary, he must go from things to concepts,

incessantly creating new thoughts, and inces

santly recasting the old.

There could be no solution of the problem

in a more or less ingenious mosaic or tessel

lation of rigid concepts, pre-existing to be

employed. We need plastic fluid, supple and

living concepts, capable of being continually

modeled on reality, of delicately following its

infinite curves. The philosopher s task is then

to create concepts much more than to combine

them. And each of the concepts he creates



METHOD 47

j

must remain open and adjustable, ready for

the necessary renewal and adaptation, like a

I

method or a program: it must be the arrow

pointing to a path which descends from in

tuition to language, not a boundary marking

I

a terminus. In this way only does philosophy

|

remain what it ought to be: the examination

into the consciousness of the human mind, the

effort towards enlargement and depth which it

attempts unremittingly, in order to advance

beyond its present intellectual condition.

Do you want an example? I will take that

of human personality. The ego is one; the

ego is many: no one contests this double

formula. But everything admits of it; and

what is its lesson to us? Observe what is

bound to happen to the two concepts of unity

and multiplicity, by the mere fact that wetake them for general frames independent of

the reality contained, for detached language

admitting empty and blank definition, always

representable by the same word, no matter

what the circumstances: they are no longerliving and colored ideas, but abstract, motion

less, and neutral forms, without shades or

gradations, without distinction of case, char

acterizing two points of view from which

youcan observe

anythingand

everything.



48 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

This being so, how could the application of

these forms help us to grasp the original and

peculiar nature of the unity and multiplicity

of the ego? Still further, how could we,

between two such entities, statically defined

by their opposition, ever imagine a synthesis?

Correctly speaking, the interesting question

is not whether there is unity, multiplicity,

combination, one with the other, but to see

what sort of unity, multiplicity, or combina

tion realizes the case in point; above all, to

understand how the living person is at once

multiple unity and one multiplicity, how these

two poles of conceptual dissociation are con

nected, how these two diverging branches of

abstraction join at the roots. The interesting

point, in a word, is not the two symbolical

colorless marks indicating the two ends of

the spectrum; it is the continuity between,

with its changing wealth of coloring, and the

double progress of shades which resolve it

into red and violet.

But it is impossible to arrive at this con

crete transition unless we begin from direct in

tuition and descend to the analyzing concepts.

Again, the same duty of reversing our

familiar attitude, of inverting our customary

proceeding, becomes ours for another reason.



METHOD 49

The conceptual atomism of common thought

leads it to place movement in a lower order

than rest, fact in a lower order than becoming.

According to common thought, movement is

added to the atom, as a supplementary acci

dent to a body previously at rest; and, by be

coming, the pre-existent terms are strung to

gether like pearls on a necklace. It delights

in rest, and endeavors to bring to rest all that

moves. Immobility appears to it to be the

base of existence. It decomposes and pulver

izes every change and every phenomenon,

until it finds the invariable element in them.It is immobility which it esteems as primary,

fundamental, intelligible of itself; and mo

tion, on the contrary, which it seeks to ex

plain as a function of immobility. And so it

tends, out of progresses and transitions, tomake things. To see distinctly, it appears to

need a dead halt. What indeed are concepts

but logical lookout stations along the path of

becoming? what are they but motionless ex

ternal views, taken atintervals,

of an unin

terrupted stream of movement?

Each of them isolates and fixes an aspect,"

as the instantaneous lightning flashes on a

storm-scene in the darkness."1

1Matter and

Memory, p.248.



50 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

Placed together, they make a net laid in ad

vance, a strong meshwork in which the human

intelligence posts itself securely to spy the flux

of reality, and seize it as it passes. Such a

proceeding is made for the practical world, and

is out of place in the speculative. Everywhere we are trying to find constants, identi

ties, non-variants, states;and we imagine ideal

science as an open eye which gazes forever

upon objects that do not move. The constant

is the concrete support demanded by our

action: the matter upon which we operate

must not escape our grasp and slip through

our hands, if we are to be able to work it.

The constant, again, is the element of lan

guage, in which the word represents its inert

permanence, in which it constitutes the solid

fulcrum, the foundation and landmark of dia

lectic progress, being that which can be dis

carded by the mind, whose attention is thus

free for other tasks. In this respect analysis

by concepts is the natural method of common-

sense. It consists in asking from time to time

what point the object studied has reached,

what it has become, in order to see what one

could derive from it, or what it is fitting to

say of it.

But this method has only a practical reach.



METHOD 51

Reality, which in its essence is becoming,

passes through our concepts without ever let

ting itself be caught, as a moving body passes

fixed points. When we filter it, we retain

only its deposit, the result of the becoming

drifted down to us.

Do the dams, canals, and buoys make the

current of the river? Do the festoons of dead

seaweed ranged along the sand make the

rising tide? Let us beware of confounding

the stream of becoming with the sharp out

line of its result. Analysis by concepts is a

cinematograph method, and it is plain that

the inner organization of the movement is not

seen in the moving pictures. Every mo

ment we have fixed views of moving objects.

With such conceptual sections taken in the

stream of continuity, however many we ac

cumulate, should we ever reconstruct the

movement itself, the dynamic connection, the

march of the images, the transition from one

view to another? This capacity for movement

must be contained in thepicture apparatus,

and must therefore be given in addition to

the views themselves; and nothing can better

prove how, after all, movement is never ex

plicable except by itself, never grasped ex

cept in itself.



52 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

But if we take movement as our principle,

it is, on thecontrary, possible,

and even easy,

to slacken speed by imperceptible degrees,

and stop dead.

From a dead stop we shall never get our

movement again ;but rest can very well be con

ceived as the limit of movement, as its arrest

or extinction; for rest is less than movement.

In this way the true philosophical method,

which is the inverse of the common method,

consists in taking up a position from the very

outset in the bosom of becoming, in adopting

its changing curves and variable tension, in

sympathizing with the rhythm of its genesis,

in perceiving all existence from within, as a

growth, in following it in its inner generation ;

in short, in promoting movement to funda

mental reality, and, inversely, in degrading

fixed states to the rank of secondary and

derived reality.

And thus, to come back to the example of

the human personality, the philosopher must

seek in the ego not so much a ready-made

unity or multiplicity as, if I may venture the

expression, two antagonistic and correlative

movements of unification and purification.

There is then a radical difference between

philosophic intuition and conceptual analysis.



METHOD 53

The latter delights in the play of dialectic, in

fountains ofknowledge,

where it is interested

only in the immovable basins; the former goes

back to the source of the concepts, and seeks

to possess it where it gushes out. Analysis

cuts the channels ;intuition supplies the water.

Intuition acquires and analysis expends.

It is not a question of banning analysis;

science could not do without it, and philosophy

could not do without science. But we must

reserve for it its normal place and its just task.

Concepts are the deposited sediment of in

tuition: intuition produces the concepts, not

the concepts intuition. From the heart of

intuition you will have no difficulty in seeing

how it splits up and analyzes into concepts,

concepts of such and such a kind or such and

such a shade. But by successive analyses you

will never reconstruct the least intuition, just

as, no matter how you distribute the water,

you will never reconstruct the reservoir in its

original condition.

Begin from intuition: it is a summit from

which we can descend by infinite slopes; it is

a picture which we can place in an infinite

number of frames. But all the frames together

will not recompose the picture, and the lower

ends of all the slopes will not explain how they



54 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

meet at the summit. Intuition is a necessary

beginning; it is the impulse which sets the

analysis in motion, and gives it direction ; it is

the sounding which brings it to solid bottom;

the soul which assures its unity."

I shall

never understand how black and white inter

penetrate, if I have not seen gray, but I

understand without trouble, after once seeing

gray, how we can regard it from the double

point of view of black and white."*

Here are some letters which you can ar

range in chains in a thousand ways: the in

divisible sense running along the chain, and

making one phrase of it, is the original cause

of the writing, not its consequence. Thus it

is with intuition in relation to analysis. But

beginnings and generative activities are the

proper object of the philosopher. Thus theconversion and reform incumbent on him con

sist essentially in a transition from the ana

lytic to the intuitive point of view.

The result is that the chosen instrument

ofphilosophic thought is metaphor; and of

metaphor we know Mr. Bergson to be an in

comparable master. What we have to do, he

says himself, is"

to elicit a certain active force

which in most men is liable to be trammeled

1

Introduction to Metaphysics,



METHOD 55

by mental habits more useful to life," to

awaken in them the feeling of the immediate,

original, and concrete. But"

many different

images, borrowed from very different orders

of things, can, by their convergent action,

direct consciousness to the precise point

where there is a certain intuition to be seized.

By choosing images as unlike as possible, weprevent any one of them from usurping the

place of the intuition it is intended to call up,

since it would in that case be immediately

routed by its rivals. In making them all,

despite their different aspects, demandof our

mind the same kind of attention, and in some

way the same degree of tension, we accustom

our consciousness little by little to a quite

peculiar and well-determined disposition, pre

ciselythe one which it

oughtto

adoptto

appear to itself unmasked."

Strictly speaking, the intuition of immediacy

is inexpressible. But it can be suggested and

called up. How? By ringing it round with

concurrent metaphors. Our aim is to modify

the habits of imagination in ourselves which

are opposed to a simple and direct view, to

break through the mechanical imagery in

which we have allowed ourselves to be caught ;

1Introduction to Metaphysics.



56 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

and it is by awakening other imagery and

other habits that we can succeed in so doing.

But then, you will say, where is the difference

between philosophy and art, between meta-

1

physical and aesthetic intuition? Art also

tends to reveal nature to us, to suggest to us

a direct vision of it, to lift the veil of illusion

which hides us from ourselves; and aesthetic

intuition is, in its own way, perception of

immediacy. We revive the feeling of reality

obliterated by habit, we summon the deep and

penetrating soul of things: the object is the

same in both cases; and the means are also

the same; images and metaphors. Is Mr.

Bergson only a poet, and does his work

amount to nothing but the introduction of

impressionism in metaphysics?

It is an old objection. If the truth betold, Mr. Bergson s immense scientific knowl

edge should be sufficient refutation.

Only those who have not read the mass of

carefully proved and positive discussions

couldgive way thus to the impressions of art

awakened by what is truly a magic style.

But we can go further and put it better.

That there are analogies between philosophyand art, between metaphysical and aesthetic

intuition, is

unquestionableand uncontested.



METHOD 57

At the same time, the analogies must not be

allowed to hide the differences.

Art is, to a certain extent, philosophy

previous to analysis, previous to criticism and

science; the aesthetic intuition is metaphysical

intuition in process of birth, bounded by

dream, not proceeding to the test of positive

verification. Reciprocally, philosophyis the

art which follows upon science, and takes ac

count of it, the art which uses the results of

analysis as its material, and submits itself to

the demands of stern criticism; metaphysical

intuition is the aesthetic intuition verified,sys

tematized, ballasted by the language of reason.

Philosophy then differs from art in two

essential points: first of all, it rests upon,

envelops, and supposes science; secondly, it

implies a test of verification in its strict

meaning. Instead of stopping at the acts

of common-sense, it completes them with all

the contributions of analysis and scientific

investigation.

We said just now of common-sense that, in

its inmost depths, it possesses reality: that is

only quite exact when we mean common-sense

developed in positive science; and that is why

philosophy takes the results of science as its

basis, for each of these results, like the facts



58 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

and data of common perception, opens a way

for critical penetration towards the immediate.

Just now I was comparing the two kinds of

knowledge which the theorist and the engineer

can have of a machine, and I allowed the

advantage of absolute knowledge to practical

experience, whilst theory seemed to me mainly

relative to the constructive industry. That is

true, and I do not go back upon it. But the

most experienced engineer, who did not know

the mechanism of his machine, who possessed

only unanalyzed feelings about it, would have

only an artist s, not a philosopher s knowledge. For absolute intuition, in the full sense

of the word, we must have integral experi

ence; that is to say, a living application of ra

tional theory no less than of working technique.

To journey towards living intuition, start

ing from complete science and complete sensa

tion, is the philosopher s task; and this task

is governed by standards unknown to art.

Metaphysical intuition offers a victorious

resistance to thetest of thorough and con

tinued experiment, to the test of calculation

as to that of working, to the complete experi

ment which brings into play all the various

deoxydizing agents of criticism; it shows it

self capable of

withstanding analysiswithout



METHOD 59

dissolving or succumbing; it abounds in con

cepts which satisfy the understanding, and

exalt it; in a word, it creates light and truthon all mental planes; and these characteristics

are sufficient to distinguish it in a profound

degree from aesthetic intuition.

The latter is only the prophetic type of the

former, a dream or presentiment, a veiled andstill uncertain dawn, a twilight myth preced

ing and proclaiming, in the half-darkness, the

full day of positive revelation. . . .

Every philosophy has two faces, and must

be studied in two movements method and

teaching.

These are its two moments, its two aspects,

no doubt co-ordinate and mutually dependent,

but none the less distinct.

We have just examined the method of the

new philosophy inaugurated by Mr. Bergson.

To what teaching has this method led us, and

to what can we foresee that it will lead us?

This is what we have still to find.



II

TEACHING

THE sciences properly so called, those that

are by agreement termed positive, present

themselves as so many external and circum

ferentialpoints from which we view reality.

They leave us on the outside of things, and

confine themselves to investigating from a

distance.

The views they give us resemble the brief

perspectivesof a town which we obtain in

looking at it from different angles on the

surrounding hills.

Less even than that: for very soon, by in

creasing abstraction, the colored views give

place to regular lines, and even to

simple

con

ventional notes, which are more practical in

use and waste less time. And so the sciences

remain prisoners of the symbol, and all the

inevitable relativity involved in its use. But

philosophy claims to pierce within reality, es-

60



TEACHING 61

tablish itself in the object, follow its thousand

turns and folds, obtain from it a direct and

immediate feeling, and penetrate right into theconcrete depths of its heart; it is not content

with an analysis, but demands an intuition.

Now there is one existence which, at the

outset, we know better and more surely tharr

any other;there is a

privilegedcase in which

the effort of sympathetic revelation is natural

and almost easy to us; there is one reality at

least which we grasp from within, which we^

perceive in its deep and internal content.

Thisreality

is ourselves. It is

typical

of all,

reality, and our study may fitly begin here.

Psychology puts us in direct contact with it,

and metaphysics attempt to generalize this

contact. But such a generalization can only,

be attempted if, to begin with, we are familiar

with reality at the point where we have im

mediate access to it.

The path of thought which the philosopher

must take is from the inner to the outer being.

:<

Know thyself"

: the old maxim has re

mained the motto of philosophy since Socrates,

the motto at least which marks its initial



62 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

moment, when, inclining towards the depth

of the subject, it commences its true work of

penetration, whilst science continues to extendon the surface. Each philosophy in turn has

commented upon and applied this old motto.

But Mr. Bergson, more than anyone else, has

given it, as he does everything else he takes up,

a new and profound meaning. What was thecurrent interpretation before him? Speaking

only of the last century we may say that,

under the influence of Kant, criticism had till

now been principally engaged in unraveling

the contribution of the subject in the actof

consciousness, in establishing our perception

of things through certain representative forms

borrowed from our own constitution. Such

was, even yesterday, the authenticated way of

regardingthe

problem.And it is

preciselythis

attitude which Mr. Bergson, by a volte-face

which will remain familiar to him in the course

of his researches, reverses from the outset.

"

It has appeared to me," says he,1 "

that

there was

groundfor

setting

oneself the inverse

problem, and asking whether the most apparent

states of the ego itself, which we think we

grasp directly, are not most of the time per

ceived through certain forms borrowed from

1

Essay on the Immediate Dataof Consciousness,

Conclusion.



TEACHING 63

the outer world, which in this way gives us

back what we have lent it. A priori, it seems

fairly probable that this is what goes on. Forsupposing that the forms of which we are

speaking, to which we adapt matter, come

entirely from the mind, it seems difficult to

apply them constantly to objects without soon

producing the coloring of the objects in theforms; therefore in using these forms for the

knowledge of our own personality, we risk

taking a reflection of the frame in which we

place them that is, actually, the external

world for the

very coloringof the

ego.But

we can go further, and state that forms appli

cable to things cannot be entirely our own

work; that they must result from a com

promise between matter and mind; that if

we give much to this matter, we doubtless

receive something from it; and that, in this

way, when we try to possess ourselves again

after an excursion into the outer world, we no

longer have our hands free."

To avoid such a consequence, there is, we

must admit, a conceivable loophole. It con

sists in maintaining on principle an absolute

analogy, an exact similitude between internal

reality and external objects. The forms which

suit the 6ne would then also suit the other.



64 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

But it must be observed that such a principle

constitutes in the highest degree a metaphysical

thesis which it would be on all hands illegal

to assert previously as a postulate of method.

Secondly, and above all, it must be observed

that on this head experience is decisive, and

manifests more plainly every day the failure

of the theories which try to assimilate the

world of consciousness to that of matter, to

copy psychology from physics. We have here

two different"

orders." The apparatus of the

first does not admit of being employed in the

second. Hence the necessity of the attitude

adopted by Mr. Bergson. We have an effort

to make, a work of reform to undertake, to

lift the veil of symbols which envelops our

usual representation of the ego, and thus con

ceals us from our own view, in order to find

out what we are in reality, immediately, in our

inmost selves. This effort and this work are

necessary, because, "in order to contemplate

the ego in its original purity, psychology must

eliminate or correct certain forms which bear

the visible mark of the outer world." What

are these forms? Let us confine ourselves to

the most important. Things appear to us as

numerable units, placed side by side in space.

1

Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Conclusion



TEACHING 65

They compose numerical and spatial multi

plicity, a dust of terms between which geo

metrical ties are established.

But space and number are the two forms

of immobility, the two schemes of analysis,

by which we must not let ourselves be ob

sessed. I do not say that there is no place

to give them, even in the internal world. But

the more deeply we enter into the heart of

psychological life, the less they are in place.

The fact is, there are several planes of coni

sciousness, situated at different depths, mark-1

ing all the intervening degrees between pure

thought and bodily action, and each mental

phenomenon interests all these planes simul

taneously, and is thus repeated in a thousand

higher tones, like the harmonies of one and the

same note.

Or, if you prefer it, the life of the spirit is

not the uniform transparent surface of a mere ;

rather it is a gushing spring which, at first

pent in, spreads upwards and outwards, like a

sheaf of corn, passing through many different

states, from the dark and concentrated welling

of the source to the gleam of the scattered

tumbling spray ;and each of its moods presents

in its turn a similar character, being itself only

a thread within the whole. Such without



66 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

doubt is the central and activating idea of the

admirable book entitled Matter and Memory.

I cannot possibly condense its substance here,

or convey its astonishing synthetic power,

which succeeds in contracting a complete

metaphysic, and in gripping it so firmly that

the examination ends by passing to the dis

cussion of a few humble facts relative to the

philosophy of the brain! But its technical

severity and its very conciseness, combined

with the wealth it contains, render it irresum-

able; and I can only in a few words indicate

its conclusions.

First of all, however little we pride ourselves

on positive method, we must admit the exist

ence of an internal world, of a spiritual activity

distinct from matter and its mechanism. No

chemistry of the brain, no dance of atoms, is1

equivalent to the least thought, or indeed to

the least sensation.

Some, it is true, have brought forward a

thesis of parallelism, according to which each

mentalphenomenon corresponds point by

point to a phenomenon in the brain, without

adding anything to it, without influencing its

course, merely translating it into another

tongue, so that a glance sufficiently penetrat

ingto follow the molecular revolutions and



TEACHING 67

the fluxes of nervous production in their least

episodes would immediately read the inmost

secrets of the associated consciousness.

But no one will deny that a thesis of this

kind is only in reality a hypothesis, that it

goes enormously beyond the certain data of

current biology, and that it can only be

formulated by anticipating future discoveries

in a preconceived direction. Let us be candid :

it is not really a thesis of positive science, but

a metaphysical thesis in the unpleasant mean

ing of the term. Taking it at its best, its

worth to-day could only be one of intelligible-

ness. And intelligible it is not.

How are we to understand a consciousness

destitute of activity and consequently without

connection with reality, a kind of phosphor

escence which emphasizes the lines of vibration

in the brain, and renders in miraculous dupli

cate, by its mysterious and useless light, cer

tain phenomena already complete without it?

One day Mr. Bergson came down into the

arena of dialectic, and, talking to his opponents

in their own language, pulled their"

psycho-

physiological paralogism"

to pieces before

their eyes; it is only by confounding in one

and the same argument two systems of incom

patible notations, idealism and realism, that



68 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

we succeed in enunciating the parallelist thesis.

This reasoning went home, all the more as it

was adapted to the usual form of discussions

between philosophers. But a more positive

and more categorical proof is to be found all

through Matter and Memory. From the pre

cise example of recollection analyzed to its

lowest depths, Mr. Bergson completely grasps

and measures the divergence between soul

and body, between mind and matter. Then,

putting into practice what he said elsewhere

about the creation of new concepts, he arrives

at the conclusion these are his own expres

sions that between the psychological fact

and its counterpart in the brain there must

be a relation sui generis, which is neither the

determination of the one by the other, nor

their reciprocal independence, nor the production of the latter by the former, nor of the

former by the latter, nor their simple parallel

concomitance; in short, a relation which an

swers to none of the ready-made concepts

which abstraction puts at our service, butwhich may be approximately formulated in

these terms :

*

"

Given a psychological state, that part of

1

Report of the French Philosophical Society, meeting,

2nd May 1901.



TEACHING 69

the state which admits of play, the part which

would be translated by an attitude of the body

or by bodily actions, is represented in the

brain;the remainder is independent of it, and

has no equivalent in the brain. So that to one

and the same state of the brain there may be

many different psychological states which cor

respond, though not all kinds of states. Theyare psychological states which all have in com

mon the same motor scheme. Into one and the

same frame many pictures may go, but not all

pictures. Let us take a lofty abstract philo

sophical thought. We do not conceive it without adding to it an image representing it,

which we place beneath.

"We do not represent the image to our

selves, again, without supporting it by a de

sign which resumesits

leadingfeatures.

Wedo not imagine this design itself without

imagining and, in so doing, sketching certain

movements which would reproduce it. It is

this sketch, and this sketch only, which is rep

resented in the brain. Frame the sketch, there

is a margin for the image. Frame the image

again, there remains a margin, and a still

larger margin, for the thought. The thought

is thus relatively free and indeterminate in

relation to the activity which conditions it in



70 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

the brain, for this activity expresses only the

motive articulation of the idea, and the artic

ulation may be the same for ideas absolutely

different. And yet it is not complete liberty

nor absolute indetermination, since any kind

of idea, taken at hazard, would not present the

articulation desired.

"

In short, none of the simple concepts

furnished us by philosophy could express the

relation we seek, but this relation appears

with tolerable clearness to result from experi

ment."

The same analysis of facts tells us how the

planes of consciousness, of which I spoke just

now, are arranged, the law by which they are

distributed, and the meaning which attaches

to their disposition. Let us neglect the

intervening multiples, and look only at the

extreme poles of the series.

We are inclined to imagine too abrupt a

severance between gesture and dream, between

action and thought, between body and mind.

There are not two plane surfaces, without

thickness or transition, placed one above the

other on different levels; it is by an imper

ceptible degradation of increasing depth, and

decreasing materiality, that we pass from one

term to the other.



TEACHING 71

And the characteristics are continually

changing in the course of the transition.

Thus our initial problem confronts us again,

more acutely than ever: are the forms of

number and space equally suitable on all

planes of consciousness?

Let us consider the most external of these

planes of life, the one which is in contact withthe outer world, the one which receives directly

the impressions of external reality. We live

as a rule on the surface of ourselves, in the

numerical and spatial dispersion of language

and gesture. Our deeper ego is covered as it

were with a tough crust, hardened in action:

it is a skein of motionless and numerable

habits, side by side, and of distinct and solid

things, with sharp outlines and mechanical re

lations.

Andit is for the

representationof

the phenomena which occur within this dead

rind that space and number are valid.

For we have to live, I mean live our

common daily life, with our body, with our

customarymechanism rather than with our

true depths. Our attention is therefore most

often directed by a natural inclination to the

practical worth and useful function of our in

ternal states, to the public object of which

they are the sign, to the effect they produce ex-



72 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

ternally, to the gestures by which we express

them in space. A social average of individual

modalities interests us more than the incom

municable originality of our deeper life. The

words of language besides offer us so many

symbolic centers round which crystallize groups

of motor mechanisms set up by habit, the only

usual elements of our internal determinations.

Now, contact with society has rendered these

motor mechanisms practically identical in all

men. Hence, whether it be a question of sen

sation, feeling, or ideas, we have these neutral

dry and colorless residua, which spread life

less over the surface of ourselves,"

like dead

leaves on the water of apond."

Thus the progress we have lived falls into

the rank of a thing that can be handled. Space

and number lay hold of it. And soon all that

remains of what was movement and life is

combinations formed and annulled, and forces

mechanically composed in a whole of juxta

posed atoms, and to represent this whole a

collection of petrified concepts, manipulated

in dialectic like counters.

Quite different appears the true inner reality

and quite different are its profound character

istics. To begin with, it contains nothing

1 Essay on the Immediate Data, p. 135.



TEACHING 73

quantitative; the intensity of a psychological

state is not a magnitude, nor can it be meas

ured. The Essay on the Immediate Data of

Consciousness begins with the proof of this

leading statement. If it is a question of a sim

ple state, such as a sensation of light or weight,

the intensity is measured by a certain quality

of shade which indicates to us approximately,

by an association of ideas and thanks to our

acquired experience, the magnitude of the

objective cause from which it proceeds. If,

on the contrary, it is a question of a complex

state,such as those

impressionsof

profoundjoy or sorrow which lay hold of us entirely,

invading and overwhelming us, what we call

their intensity expresses only the confused

feeling of a qualitative progress, and increasing

wealth."

Take, for

example,

an obscure desire,

which has gradually become a profound pas

sion. You will see that the feeble intensity of

this desire consisted first of all in the fact that

it seemed to you isolated and in a way foreign

to all the rest of your inner life. But little by

little it penetrated a larger number of psychic

elements, dyeing them, so to speak, its own

color; and now you find your point of view

on things as a whole appears to you to have

changed. Is it not true that you become aware



74 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

of a profound passion, once it has taken root,

by the fact that the same objects no longer

produce the same impression upon you?

All your sensations, all your ideas, appear

to you refreshed by it; it is like a new child

hood."x

There is here none of the homogeneity which

is the property of magnitude, and the necessary

condition of measurement, giving a view of

the less in the bosom of the more. The ele

ment of number has vanished, and with it

numerical multiplicity extended in space.

Our inner states form a qualitative continuity ;

they are prolonged and blended into one

another; they are grouped in harmonies, each

note of which contains an echo of the whole;

they are encircled by an innumerable degrada

tion of halos, which gradually color the total

content of consciousness ; they live each in the

bosom of his fellow."

I am the scent of roses," were the words

Condillac put in the mouth of his statue; and

these words translate the immediate truth

exactly, as soon as observation becomes naive

and simple enough to attain pure fact. In a

passing breath I breathe my childhood; in the

rustle of leaves, in a ray of moonlight, I find

1

Essay on the Immediate Data, p. 8.



TEACHING 75

an infinite series of reflections and dreams.

A thought, a feeling, an act, may reveal a

complete soul. My ideas, my sensations, arelike me. How would such facts be possible,

if the multiple unity of the ego did not present

the essential characteristic of vibrating in its

entirety in the depths of each of the parts

descried or rather determined init

by analysis?

All psychical determinations envelop and

imply each other reciprocally. And the fact

that the soul is thus present in its entirety in

each of its acts, its feelings, for example, or its

ideas in its sensations, its recollections in its

percepts, its inclinations in its obvious states,

is the justifying principle of metaphors, the

source of all poetry, the truth which modern

philosophy proclaims with more force every

day under the name of immanence of thought,

the fact which explains our moral responsibility

with regard to our affections and our beliefs

themselves; and finally, it is the best of us,

since it is this which ensures our being able

to surrender ourselves, genuinely and unre

servedly, and this which constitutes the real

unity of our person.

Let us push still further into the hidden

retreat of the soul. Here we are in these

regions of twilight and dream, where our ego



76 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

takes shape, where the spring within us

gushes up, in the warm secrecy of the dark

ness which ushers our trembling being into

birth. Distinctions fail us. Words are useless

now. We hear the wells of consciousness at

their mysterious task like an invisible shiver

of running water through the mossy shadow

of the caves. I dissolve in the joy of becom

ing. I abandon myself to the delight of being

a pulsing reality. I no longer know whether

I see scents, breathe sounds, or smell colors.

Do I love? Do I think? The question has

no longer a meaning for me. I am, in mycomplete self, each of my attitudes, each of

my changes. It is not my sight which is

indistinct or my attention which is idle. It is

I who have resumed contact with pure reality,

whose essential movement admits no form of

number. He who thus makes the really"

deep"

and"

inner"

effort necessary to be

coming were it only for an elusive moment

discovers, under the simplest appearance,

inexhaustible sources of unsuspected wealth;

the rhythm of his duration becomes amplified

and refined; his acts become more conscious;

and in what seemed to him at first sudden

severance or instantaneous pulsation he dis

covers complex transitions imperceptibly



TEACHING 77

shaded off, musical transitions full of unex

pected repetitions and threaded movements.

Thus, the deeper we go in consciousness,

the less suitable become these schemes of

separation and fixity existing in spatial and

numerical forms. The inner world is that of

pure quality. There is no measurable homo

geneity, no collection of atomically constructed

elements. The phenomena distinguished in

it by analysis are not composing units, but

phases. And it is only when they reach the

surface, when they come in contact with the

external world, when they are incarnated in

language or gesture, that the categories of

matter become adapted to them. In its true

nature, reality appears as an uninterrupted

flow, an impalpable shiver of fluid changing

tones, a perpetual flux of waves which ebb andbreak and dissolve into one another without

shock or jar. Everything is ceaseless change;

and the state which appears the most stable is

already change, since it continues and grows

old. Constant quantities are represented only

by the materialization of habit or by means of

practical symbols. And it is on this point that

Mr. Bergson rightly insists.1

"

The apparent discontinuity of psycho-

1

Creative Evolution, p. 3.



78 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

logical life is due, then, to the fact that our

attention is concentrated on it in a series of

discontinuous acts; where there is only a

gentle slope, we think we see, when we follow

the broken line of our attention, the steps of

a staircase. It is true that our psychological

life is full of surprises. A thousand incidents

arise which seem to contrast with what pre

cedes them, and not to be connected with what

follows. But the gap in their appearances

stands out against the continuous background

on which they are represented, and to which

they owe the very intervals that separate them;

they are the drumbeats which break into

the symphony at intervals. Our attention is

fixed upon them because they interest it

more, but each of them proceeds from the

fluid mass of our entire psychological exist

ence. Each of them is only the brightest

point in a moving zone which understands all

that we feel, think, wish; in fact, all that we

are at a given moment. It is this zone which

really constitutes our state. But we mayobserve that states defined in this way are not

distinct elements. They are an endless stream

of mutualcontinuity."

And do not think that perhaps such a

description represents only or principally our



TEACHING 79

life of feeling. Reason and thought share the

same characteristic, as soon as we penetrate

their living depth, whether it be a question of

creative invention or of those primordial judg

ments which direct our activity. If they

evidence greater stability, it is in permanence

of direction, because our past remains present

to us.

For we are endowed with memory, and that

perhaps is, on the whole, our most profound

characteristic. It is by memory we enlarge

ourselves and draw continually upon the

wealth of our treasuries. Hence comes the

completely original nature of the change which

constitutes us. But it is here that we must

shake off familiar representations! Common-

sense cannot think in terms of movement. It

forges a static conceptionof

it, and destroysit by arresting it under pretext of seeing

it better. To define movement as a series

of positions, with a generating law, with a

time-table or correspondence sheet between

places

and times, is

surely

a

ready-madepre

sentation. Are we not confusing the trajec

tory and its performance, the points traversed

and the traversing of the points, the result of

the genesis and the genesis of the result; in

short, the quantitative distance over which the



80 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

flight extends, and the qualitative flight which

puts this distance behind it? In this way the

very mobility which is the essence of move

ment vanishes. There is the same common

mistake about time. Analytic and synthetic

thought can see in time only a string of co

incidences, each of them instantaneous, a logi

cal series of relations. It imagines the whole

of it to be a graduated slide-rule, in which the

luminous point called the present is the geo

metrical index.

Thus it gives form to time in space,"

a

kind of fourth dimension,"* or at least it

reduces it to nothing more than an abstract

scheme of succession,"

a stream without

bottom or sides, flowing without determinable

strength, in an indefinable direction."2

It

requires time to be homogeneous, and every

homogeneous medium is space,"

for as homo

geneity consists here in the absence of any

quality, it is not clear how two forms of

homogeneity could be distinguished one from

the other."

3

Quite different appears real duration, the

duration which is lived. It is pure hetero-

1

Essay on the Immediate Data.*Introduction to Metaphysics.

Essay on the Immediate Data, p. 98,



TEACHING 81

geneity. It contains a thousand different de

grees of tension or relaxation, and its rhythm

varies without end. The magic silence of

calm nights or the wild disorder of a tempest,

the still joy of ecstasy or the tumult of passion

unchained, a steep climb towards a difficult

truth or a gentle descent from a luminous

principle to consequences which easily follow,

a moral crisis or a shooting pain, call up

intuitions admitting no comparison with one

another. We have here no series of moments,

but prolonged and interpenetrating phases;

their sequence is not a substitution of one

point for another, but rather resembles a

musical resolution of harmony into harmony.

And of this ever-new melody which constitutes

our inner life every moment contains a reso

nance or an echo of past moments. Whatare we really, what is our character, except

the condensation of the history which we have

lived since our birth, even before our birth,

since we bring with us our prenatal dis

positions? Without doubt wethink

onlywith a small part of our past; but it is with

our complete past, including our original bias

of soul, that we desire, wish, and act."

*

This

is what makes our duration irreversible, and

1Creative

Evolution, pp.5-6.



82 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

its novelty perpetual, for each of the states

through which it passes envelops the recollec

tion of all past states. And thus we see, in

the end, how, for a heing endowed with mem

ory,"

existence consists in change, change in

ripening, ripening in endless self-creation."

With this formula we face the capital problem in which psychology and metaphysics

meet, that of liberty. The solution given by

Mr. Bergson marks one of the culminating

points of his philosophy. It is from this sum

mit that he findslight

thrown on the riddle of

inner being. And it is the center where all the

lines of his research converge.

What is liberty? What must we under

stand by this word? Beware of the answer

you are going to give.

Everydefinition, in

the strict sense of the term, will imply the

determinist thesis in advance, since, under pain

of going round in a circle, it will be bound to

express liberty as a function of what it is not.

Either psychological liberty is an illusive ap

pearance, or, if it is real, we can only grasp

it by intuition, not by analysis, in the light of

an immediate feeling. For a reality is verified,

not constructed; and we are now or never in

one of those situations where the philosopher s




TEACHING 83

task is to create some new concept, instead

of abiding by a combination of previous

elements.

Man is free, says common-sense, in so far as

his action depends only on himself. We are

free," says Mr. Bergson,1 "

when our acts pro

ceed from our entire personality, when they

express it, when they exhibit that indefinableresemblance to it which we find occasionally

between the artist and his work." That is all

we need seek; two conceptions which are

equivalent to each other, two concordant

formula?.It

is

true that this amounts to determining the free act by its very originality,

in the etymological sense of the word: which

is at bottom only another way of declaring

it incommensurable with every concept, and

reluctant to be confined

by anydefinition.

But, after all, is not that the only true imme

diate fact?

That our spiritual life is genuine action,

capable of independence, initiative, and irre

ducible novelty, not mere result produced

from outside, not simple extension of external

mechanism, that it is so much ours as to

constitute every moment, for him who can

see, an essentially incomparable and new

1




84 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

invention, is exactly what represents for us

the name of liberty. Understood thus, and

decidedly it is like this that we must under

stand it, liberty is a profound thing: we seek

it only in those moments of high and solemn

choice which come into our life, not in the

petty familiar actions which their very insigni

ficance submits to all surrounding influences,

to every wandering breeze. Liberty is rare;

many live and die and have never known it.

Liberty is a thing which contains an infinite

number of degrees and shades; it is measured

by our capacity for the inner life. Liberty is

a thing which goes on in us unceasingly: our

liberty is potential rather than actual. And

lastly, it is a thing of duration, not of space

and number, not the work of moments or de;

crees. The free act is the act which has been

long in preparing, the act which is heavy with

our whole history, and falls like a ripe fruit

from our past life.

But how are we to establish positive verifica

tion of these views? How are we to do awaywith the danger of illusion? The proof will

in this case result from a criticism of adverse

theories, along with direct observation of

psychological reality freed from the deceptive

forms which warp the common perception of



TEACHING 85

it. And it will here be an easy task to resume

Mr. Bergson s reasoning in a few words.

The first obstacle which confronts affirma

tion of our liberty comes from physical de

terminism. Positive science, we are told,

presents the universe to us as an immense

homogeneous transformation, maintaining an

exact equivalence between departure andarrival. How can we possibly have after that

the genuine creation which we require in the

act we call free?

The answer is that the universality of the

mechanism is at bottom only a hypothesiswhich is still awaiting demonstration. On

the one hand it includes the parallelist con

ception which we have recognized as effete.

And on the other it is plain that it is not

self-sufficient. At least it

requiresthat some

where or other there should be a principle of

position giving once for all what will after

wards be maintained. In actual fact, the

course of phenomena displays three tendencies :

a tendency to conservation, beyond question;

but also a tendency to collapse, as in the

diminution of energy; and a tendency to

progress, as in biological evolution. To make

conservation the sole law of matter implies an

arbitrary decree, denoting only those aspects



86 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

of reality which will count for anything. Bywhat right do we thus exclude, with vital

effort, even the feeling of liberty which in us

is so vigorous?

We might say, it is true, that our spiritual

life, if it is not a simple extension of external

mechanism, yet proceeds according to an inter

nal mechanism equally severe, but of a differ

ent order. This would bring us to the hypoth

esis of a kind of psychological mechanism;

and in many respects this seems to be the com

mon-sense hypothesis. I need not dwell upon

it, after the numerous criticisms already made.Inner reality which does not admit number

is not a sequence of distinct terms, allow

ing a disconnected waste of absolute causality.

And the mechanism of which we dream has

no true sense for, after all, it has a sense

except in relation to the superficial phenomenawhich take place in our dead rind, in relation

to the automaton which we are in daily life.

I am ready to admit that it explains our

common actions, but here it is our profoundconsciousness which is in question, not the play

of our materialized habits.

Without insisting, then, too strongly on this

mongrel conception, let us pass to the direct

examination ofinner psychological reality.



TEACHING 87

Everything is ready for the conclusion. Our

duration, which is continually accumulating

itself, and always introducing some irreducible

new factor, prevents any kind of state, even

if superficially identical, from repeating itself

in depth. We shall never again have the

soul we had this evening." Each of our mo

ments remains essentially unique. It is some-

thing new added to the surviving past; not

only new, but unable to be foreseen.

For how can we speak of foresight which is

riot simple conjecture, how can we conceive

an absolute extrinsic determination, when the

act in birth only makes one with the finished

sum of its conditions, when these conditions

are complete only on the threshold of the

action beginning, including the fresh and

irreducible contribution added by its verydate in our history? We can only explain

afterwards, we can only foresee when it is too

late, in retrospect, when the accomplished

action has fallen into the plan of matter.

Thus our inner lifeis

a workof

enduringcreation: of phases which mature slowly,

and conclude at long intervals the decisive

moments of emancipating discovery. Un

doubtedly matter is there, under the forms of

habit,threatening

us with automatism, seek-



88 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

ing at every moment to devour us, stealing a

march on us whenever we forget. But matterrepresents in us only the waste of existence,

the mortal fall of weakened reality, the swoon

of the creative action falling back inert ; while

the depths of our being still pulse with the

liberty which,in its true

function, employsmechanism itself only as a means of action.

Now, does not this conception make a

singular exception of us in nature, an empire

within an empire? That is the question we

haveyet

toinvestigate.

ii

We have just attempted to grasp what being

is in ourselves; and we have found that it is

becoming, progress, and growth, that it is a

creative process which never ceases to labor

incessantly; in a word, that it is duration.

Must we come to the same conclusion about

external being, about existence in general?

Let us consider that external reality which

is nearest us, our body. It is known to us

both externally by our perceptions and inter

nally by our affections. It is then a privileged

case for our inquiry. In addition, and by

analogy, we shall at the same time study the



TEACHING 89

other living bodies which everyday induction

shows us to be more or less like our own.

What are the distinctive characteristics of

these new realities? Each of them possesses

a genuine individuality to a far greater degree

than inorganic objects; whilst the latter are

hardly limited at all except in relation to the

needs of the former, and so do not constitute

beings in themselves, the former evidence a

powerful internal unity which is only further

emphasized by their prodigious complication,

and form wholes which are naturally complete.

These wholes are not collections of juxtaposed

parts : they are organisms ;that is to say, sys

tems of connected functions, in which each de

tail implies the whole, and where the various

elements interpenetrate. These organisms

change and modify continually; we say of

them not only that they are, but that they

live; and their life is mutability itself, a flight,

a perpetual flux. This uninterrupted flight

cannot in any way be compared to a geo

metrical movement; it is a rhythmic succession

of phases, each of which contains the resonance

of all those which come before;each state lives

on in the state following; the life of the body

is memory; the living being accumulates its

past,makes a snowball of

itself,serves as an



90 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

open register for time, ripens, and grows old.

Despiteall

resemblances,the

living bodyal

ways remains, in some measure, an absolutely

original and unique invention, for there are not

two specimens exactly alike; and, among inert

objects, it appears as the reservoir of indeter-

mination, the center of

spontaneity,

contin-

gence, and genuine action, as if in the course

of phenomena nothing really new could be

produced except by its agency.

Such are the characteristic tendencies of

life, such the aspects which it presents to

immediate observation. Whether spiritual

activity unconsciously presides over biological

evolution, or whether it simply prolongs it,

we always find here and there the essential

features of duration.

But I spoke just now of"

individuality."

Is it really one of the distinctive marks of

life? We know how difficult it is to define

it accurately. Nowhere, not even in man, is

it fully realized; and there are beings in ex

istence in which it seems a complete illusion,

though every part of them reproduces their

complete unity.

True, but we are now dealing with biology,

in which geometrical precision is inadmis

sible, where reality is defined not so much by



TEACHING 91

the possession of certain characteristics as by

its tendency to accentuate them. It is as a

tendency that individuality is more particu

larly manifested; and if we look at it in this

light, no one can deny that it does constitute

one of the fundamental tendencies of life.

Only the truth is that the tendency to indivi

duality remains always and everywhere coun

ter-balanced, and therefore limited, by an op

posing tendency, the tendency to association, /

and above all to reproduction. This necessi

tates a correction in our analysis. Nature, in

many respects, seems to take no interest in

individuals."

Life appears to be a current

passing from one germ to another through the

medium of a developed organism."

It seems as if the organism played the part

of a thoroughfare. What is important is

rather the continuity of progress of which/

the individuals are only transitory phases.

Between these phases again there are no sharp

severances; each phase resolves and melts

imperceptibly into that which follows. Isnot the real problem of heredity to know

how, and up to what point, a new individual

breaks away from the individuals which pro

duced it? Is not the real mystery of heredity

1




92 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

the difference, not the resemblance, occurring

between one term andanother?

Whatever be its solution, all the individual

phases mutually extend and interpenetrate

one another. There is a racial memory by

which the past is continually accumulated and

preserved.Life s

historyis embodied in its

present. And that is really the ultimate rea-

son of the perpetual novelty which surprised

us just now. The characteristics of biological

evolution are thus the same as those of human

progress. Once again we find the very stuff

of reality in duration. We must not then

speak any longer of life in general as an ab

straction, or a mere heading under which we

write down all living beings."On the con

trary, to it belongs the primordial function of

reality. It is a very real current transmitted

from generation to generation, organizing and

passing through bodies, without failing or be

coming exhausted in any one of them.

We may already, then, draw one conclusion :

Reality, at bottom, is becoming. But such a

thesis runs counter to all our familiar ideas.

It is imperative that we should submit it to

the test of critical examination and positive

verification.




TEACHING 93

One system of metaphysics, I said some

time ago, underlies common-sense, animating

and informing it. According to this system,

which is the inverse of that which we have

just intimated, reality in its very depths is

fixity and permanence. This is the completely

static conception which sees in being exactly

the opposite of becoming: we cannot become,

it seems to say, except in so far as we are not.

It does not, however, mean to deny move

ment. But it represents it as fluctuation

round invariable types, as a whirling but

captive eddy. Every phenomenon appears

to it as a transformation which ends where

it began, and the result is that the world takes

the form of an eternal equilibrium in which"

nothing is created, nothing destroyed."The

idea does not need much forcing to end in

the old supposition of a cyclic return which

restores everything to its original conditions.

Everything is thus conceived in astronomical

periods. All that is left of the universe hence

forward is a whirl of atoms in which nothingcounts but certain fixed quantities translated

by our systems of equations; the rest has

vanished"

in algebraical smoke." There is

therefore nothing more or less in the effect

than in the group of causes; and the causal



94 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

relation moves towards identity as towards its

asymptote.Such a view of nature is open to many

objections, even if it were only a question of

inorganized matter. Simple physics already

betoken the insufficiency of a purely mechanic

conception. The stream of phenomenaflows

in an irreversible direction and obeys a deter

mined rhythm."

If I wish to prepare myself

a glass of sugar and water, I may do what I

like, but I must wait for my sugar to melt."

*

Here are facts whichpure

mechanism does

not take into account, regarding as it does

only statically conceived relations, and making

time into a measure only, something like a

common denominator of concrete successions,

a certain number of coincidences from which

all true duration remains absent, which would

remain unchanged even if the world s history,

instead of opening out in consecutive phases,

were to be unfolded before our eyes all at

once like a fan. Do we not indeed speak

to-day of aging and atomic separation? If

the quantity of energy is preserved, at least

its quality is continually deteriorating. Bythe side of something which remains con

stant, the world also contains something




TEACHING 95

which is being used up, dissipated, exhausted,

decomposed.

Further still, a specimen of metal, in its

molecular structure, preserves an indelible

trace of the treatment it has undergone;

natural philosophers tell us that there is a"

memory of solids." These are all very

positive facts which pure mechanism passes

over. In addition, must we not first of all

postulate what will afterwards be preserved

or deteriorated? Whence we get another

aspect of things: that of genesis and creation;

and in reality we register the ascending effort

of life as a reality no less startling than

mechanic inertia.

Finally, we have a double movement of

ascent and descent: such is what life and

matter appear to immediate observation.

These two currents meet each other, and

grapple. It is the drama of evolution, of

which Mr. Bergson once gave a masterly ex

planation, in stating the high place which man

fillsin nature

:

"

I cannot regard the general evolution and

progress of life in the whole of the organized

world, the co-ordination and subordination of

vital functions to one another in the same

living being,the relations which

psychology



96 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

and physiology combined seem bound to estab

lish between brain activity and thought in

man, without arriving at this conclusion, that

life is an immense effort attempted by thought

to obtain of matter something which matter

does not wish to give it. Matter is inert; it is

the seat ofnecessity

; it

proceeds mechanically.It seems as if thought seeks to profit by this

mechanical inclination in matter to utilize it

for actions, and thus to convert all the creative

energy it contains, at least all that this energy

possesses

which admits of

playand external

extraction, into contingent movements in space

and events in time which cannot be foreseen.

With laborious research it piles up complica

tions to rfiake liberty out of necessity, to com

pose for itself a matter so subtile, and so

mobile, that liberty, by a veritable physical

paradox, and thanks to an effort which cannot

last long, succeeds in maintaining its equilib

rium on this very mobility."

But it is caught in the snare. The eddy

on which it was poised seizes and drags it

down. It becomes prisoner of the mechanism

it has set up. Automatism lays hold of it,

and life, inevitably forgetting the end which

it had determined, which was only to be a

means in view of a superior end, is entirely



TEACHING 97

used up in an effort to preserve itself by itself.

From the humblest of organized beings to the

higher vertebrates which come immediately

before man, we witness an attempt which is

always foiled and always resumed with more

and more art. Man has triumphed; with

difficulty, it is true, and so incompletely that

a moment s lapse and inattention on his part

surrender him to automatism again. But he

has triumphed. . . ."

1

And Mr. Bergson adds in another place:2

With man consciousness breaks the chain.

In man and in man only it obtains its freedom.

The whole history of life, till man, had been

tKe history of an effort of consciousness to

lift matter, and of the more or less complete

crushing of consciousness by matter falling

upon it again. The enterprise was para

doxical; if indeed we can speak here, except

paradoxically, of enterprise and effort. The

task was to take matter, which is necessity

itself, and create an instrument of liberty,

construct a mechanical system to triumphover mechanism, to employ the determinism

of nature to pass through the meshes of the

1

Report of the French Philosophical Society, meeting, 2nd

May 1901.

2

Creative Evolution, pp. 264-265.



98 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

net it had spread. But everywhere, except

in man, consciousness let itself be caught in

the net of which it sought to traverse the

meshes. It remained taken in the mechanisms

it had set up. The automatism which it

claimed to be drawing towards liberty enfolds

it

and dragsit

down. It has not the strengthto get away, because the energy with which

it had supplied itself for action is almost

entirely employed in maintaining the exceed

ingly subtile and essentially unstable equi

librium into which it hasbrought

matter.

But man does not merely keep his machine

going, he succeeds in using it as it pleases him.

He owes it without doubt to the superiority

of his brain, which allows him to construct an

unlimited number of motor mechanisms, to

oppose new habits to old time after time,

and to master automatism by dividing it

against itself. He owes it to his language,

which furnishes consciousness with an im

material body in which to become incarnate,

thus dispensing it from depending exclusively

upon material bodies, the flux of which would

drag it down and soon engulf it. He owes

it to social life, which stores and preserves

efforts as language stores thought, thereby

fixing a mean level to which individuals will



TEACHING 99

rise with ease, and which, by means of this

initial impulse, prevents average individuals

from going to sleep and urges better people

to rise higher. But our brain, our society, and

our language are only the varied outer signs

of one and the same internal superiority.

Each after its fashion, they tell us the unique

and exceptional success which life has won at

a given moment of its evolution. They trans

late thedjfferenoejnjmture,

and not in degree

only, which separates man from the rest of the

animal world. They let us see that if, at the

end of the broad springboard from which life

took off, all others came down, finding the

cord stretched too high, man alone has leapt

the obstacle."

But man is not on that account isolated in

nature:

"

As the smallest grain of dust formspart of our entire solar system, and is involved

along with it in this undivided downward

movement which is materiality itself, so all

organized beings from the humblest to the

highest,from the first

originsof life to the

times in which we live, and in all places as at

all times, do but demonstrate to our eyes ^a

unique impulse contrary to the movement of

matter, and, in itself, indivisible. All living

beings are connected, and all yield to the same



100 A NEW PHILOSOPHY

formidable thrust. The animal is supported

bythe

plant, manrides the

animal,and the

whole of humanity in space and time is an

immense army galloping by the side of each

of us, before and behind us, in a spirited charge

which can upset all resistance, and leap many

obstacles,perhaps

even death."*

We see with what broad and far-reaching

conclusions the new philosophy closes. In the

forcible poetry of the pages just quoted its

original accent rings deep and pure. Some of

its leading theses, moreover, are noted here.

But now we must discover the solid foundation

of underlying fact.

Let us take first the fact of biological evolu

tion. Why has it been selected as the basis of

the system? Is it really a fact, or is it only a

more or less conjectural and plausible theory?

Notice in the first instance that the argu

ment from evolution appears at least as a

weapon of co-ordination and research ad

mitted in our day by all philosophers, rejected

only on the inspiration of preconceived ideas

which are completely unscientific; and that it

succeeds in the task allotted to it is doubtless

already the proof that it responds to some part

of reality. And besides, we can go further.

1 Creative Evolution, pp. 270-271.



TEACHING 101

The idea of transformism is already con

tained in germ in the natural classification

of organized beings. The naturalist brings

resembling organisms together, divides the

group into sub-groups, within which the re

semblance is still greater, and so on; through

out the operation, the characteristics of the

group appear as general themes upon which

each of the sub-groups executes its particular

variations." Now this is precisely the relation we find

in the animal world and in the vegetable world

between that which produces and what is

produced; on the canvas bequeathed by the

ancestor to his posterity, and possessed in

common by them, each broiders his original

pattern."

*

We may, it is true, ask ourselves whetherthe genealogical method permits results so far

divergent as those presented to us by variety

of species. But embryology answers by show

ing us the highest and most complex forms of

life attained every day from very elementaryforms

; and palaeontology, as it develops, allows

us to witness the same spectacle in the uni

versal history of life, as if the succession of

phases through which the embryo passes were

1





only a recollection and an epitome of the

complete past whence it has come. In addi

tion, the phenomena of sudden changes,*

recently observed, help us to understand more

easily the conception which obtrudes itself

under so many heads, by diminishing the im

portance of the apparent lacunas in genealogical continuity. Thus the trend of all our ex

perience is the same.

Now there are some certainties which are

only centers of concurrent probabilities; there

are some truths determined only by successionof facts, but yet, by their intersection and

convergence, sufficiently determined.

That is how we measure the distance from

an inaccessible point, by regarding it time

after time from the points to which we haveaccess."

Is not that the case here? The affirmative

seems all the more inevitable inasmuch as the

language of transformism is the only language

known to thebiology

ofto-day. Evolution

can, it is true, be transposed, but not sup

pressed, since in any actual state there would

always remain this striking fact that the living

forms met with as remains in geological layers

1 Report of the French Philosophical Society, meeting, 2nd

May 1901.



TEACHING 103

are ranged by the natural affinity of their char

acteristicsin

anorder of succession

parallelto

the succession of the ages. We are not really

then inventing a hypothesis in beginning with

the affirmation of evolution. But what we

have to do is to appreciate its object.

Evolution! We meet the wordeverywhere

to-day. But how rare is the true idea! Let

us ask the astronomers who originate cosmo-

gonical hypotheses, and invent a primitive

nebula, the natural philosophers who dream

that by the deterioration of energy and the

dissipation of movement the material world

will obtain final rest in the inertia of a homo

geneous equilibrium; let us ask the biologists

and psychologists who are enemies of fixed

species and inquisitive about ancestral history.

What they are anxious to discern in evolution

is the persistent influence of an initial cause

once given, the attraction of a fixed end, a

collection of laws before the eternity of which

change becomes negligible like an appearance.

Now he who thinks of the universe as a con

struction of unchangeable relations denies by

his method the evolution of which he speaks,

since he transforms it into a calculable effect

necessarily produced by a regulated play of

generating conditions, since he implicitly




admits the illusive character of a becoming

which adds

nothing

to what is given.

Finality itself, if he keeps the name, does

not save him from his error, for finality in his

eyes is nothing but an efficient cause projected

into the future. So we see him fixing stages,

marking periods, inserting means, putting in

milestones, continually destroying movement

by halting it before his gaze. And we all

do the same by instinctive inclination. Our

concept of law, in its classical form, is not

general: it represents only the law of co

existence and of mechanism, the static relation

between two numerically disconnected terms;

and in order to grasp evolution we shall

doubtless have to invent a new type of law:

law in duration, dynamic relation. For we

can, and we must, conceive that there is an

evolution of natural laws; that these laws

never define anything but a momentary state

of things; that they are in reality like streaks

determined in the flux of becoming by the

meeting of contrary currents. "Laws," says

Monsieur Boutroux,"

are the bed down which

passes the torrent of facts; they have dug it,

though they follow it." Yet we see the

common theories of evolution appealing to the

concepts of the present to describe the past,



TEACHING 105

forcing them back to prehistoric times, and

beyondthe

reasoningof

to-day, placingat the

beginning what is only conceivable in the

mind of the contemporary thinker ;in a word,

imagining the same laws as always existing

and always observed. This is the method

which Mr. Bergson so justly criticises in

Spencer : that of reconstructing evolution with

fragments of its product.

If we wish thoroughly to grasp the reality

of things, we must think otherwise. Neither

of these ready-made concepts, mechanism and

finality, is in place, because both of them imply

the same postulate, viz. that"

everything is

given,"either at the beginning or at the end,

whilst evolution is nothing if it is not, on the

contrary,"

that whichgives."

Let us take

care not to confound evolution and develop

ment. There is the stumbling-block of the

usual transformist theories, and Mr. Bergson

devotes to it a closely argued and singularly

penetrating criticism, by an example which he

analyzes in detail.1

These theories either do

not explain the birth of variation, and limit

themselves to an attempt to make us under

stand how, once born, it becomes fixed, or else

through need of adaptation they look for a

1 Creative Evolution, chap. i.




conception of its birth. But in both cases

they

fail.

"

The truth is that adaptation explains the

windings of the movement of evolution, but

not the general directions of the movement,

t still less the movement itself. The road which

leads to the town is certainly obliged to climb

the hills and go down the slopes; it adapts

itself to the accidents of the ground; but the

accidents of the ground are not the cause of

the road, any more than they have imparted

its direction."1

At the bottom of all these errors there are

only prejudices of practical action. That is

of course why every work appears to be an

outside construction beginning with previous

elements; a phase of anticipation followed by

a phase of execution, calculation, and art, an

effective projecting cause, and a concerted

goal, a mechanism which hurls to a finality

which aims. But the genuine explanation

must be sought elsewhere. And Mr. Bergson

makes this plain by two admirable analyses in

which he takes to pieces the common ideas of

disorder and nothingness in order to explain

their meaning relative to our proceedings in

industry or language.




TEACHING 107

Let us come back to facts, to immediate

experience, and try to translate its pure data

simply. What are the characteristics of vital

evolution? First of all it is a dynamic con-^

tinuity, a continuity of qualitative progress ;<-

next, it is essentially a duration, an irreversible*

rhythm, a work of inner maturation. By the -

memory inherent in it, the whole of its past

lives on and accumulates, the whole of its past

remains forever present to it ; which is tanta

mount to saying that it is experience.

It is also an effort of perpetual invention, a

generation of continual novelty, indeducible &

and capable of defying all anticipation, as it

defies all repetition. We see it at its task of

research in the groping attempts exhibited by

the long-sought genesis of species; we see it

triumphant in the originality of the least state

of consciousness, of the least body, of the

tiniest cell, of which the infinity of times and

spaces does not offer two identical specimens.

But the reef which lies in its way, and on

which too oftenit

founders,is

habit; habitwould be a better and more powerful means

of action if it remained free, but in so far

as it congeals and becomes materialized, is a

hindrance and an obstacle. First of all we

have the

average typesround which fluctuates




an action which is decreasing and becoming re

duced in breadth. Then we have the residual

organs, the proofs of dead life, the encrusta

tions from which the stream of consciousness

gradually ebbs; and finally we have the inert

gear from which all real life has disappeared,

the masses of shipwrecked"

things"

rearing

their spectral outlines where once rolled the

open sea of mind. The concept of mechanism

suits the phenomena which occur within the

zone of wreckage, on this shore of fixities and

corpses. But life itself is rather finality, if

not in the anthropomorphic sense of premedi

tated design, plan, or program, at least in this

sense, that it is a continually renewed effort

of growth and liberation. And it is from here

we get Mr. Bergson s formulae: vital impetus

and creative evolution.

In this conception of being consciousness

is everywhere, as original and fundamental

reality, always present in a myriad degrees

of tension or sleep, and under infinitely various

rhythms.

The vital impulse consists in a"

demand

for creation"

; life in its humblest stage al

ready constitutes a spiritual activity; and its

effort sends out a current of ascending realiza

tion which again determines the counter-cur-



TEACHING 109

rent of matter. Thus all reality is contained

in a double movement of ascent and descent.

The first only, which translates an inner work

of creative maturation, is essentially durable;

the second might, in strictness, be almost

instantaneous, like that of an escaping spring ;

but the one imposes its rhythm on the other.

From this point of view mind and matter

appear not as two things opposed to each

other, as static terms in fixed antithesis, but

rather as two inverse directions of movement;

and in certain respects, we must therefore

speak not so much of matter or mind as of

spiritualization and materialization, the latter

resulting automatically from a simple inter

ruption of the former. "Consciousness or

superconsciousness is the rocket, the extin

guished remains of which fall into matter."

What image of universal evolution is then

suggested? Not a cascade of deduction, nor a

system of stationary pulsations, but a fountain

which spreads like a sheaf of corn and is

partially arrested or at least hindered and

delayed, by the falling spray. The fountain

itself, the reality which is created, is vital

activity, of which spiritual activity represents

the highest form; and the spray which falls





is the creative act which falls, it is reality

which is undone, it is matter and inertia. Ina word, the supreme law of genesis and fall,

the double play of which constitutes the uni

verse, comprises a psychological formula.x

Everything begins in the manner of an in

vention, as the fruit of duration and creative

genius, by liberty, by pure mind; then comes

habit, a kind of body, as the body is already a

group of habits;and habit, taking root, being

a work of consciousness which escapes it and

turns against it,is

little by little degraded intomechanism in which the soul is buried.

in

The main lines andgeneral perspective

of

Mr. Bergson s philosophy now perhaps begin

to appear. Certainly I am the first to feel

how powerless a slender resume really is to

translate all its wealth and all its strength.

At least I wish I could have contributed to

making its movement, and what I may call

its rhythm, clearer to perception. It is from

the books of the master himself that a more

complete revelation must be sought. Andthe few words which I am still going to add

as conclusion are only intended to sketch the



TEACHING 111

principal consequences of the doctrine, and

allow its distant reach to be seen.

The evolution of life would be a very simple

and easy thing to understand if it were fulfilled

along one single trajectory and followed a

straight path."

But we are here dealing with

a shell which has immediately burst into frag

ments, which, being themselves species of

shells, have again burst into fragments destined

to burst again, and so on for a very long

time." It is, in fact, the property of a

tendency to develop itself in the expansion

which analyzes it. As for the causes of this/

dispersion into kingdoms, then into species/;

and finally into individuals, we can distin

guish two series: the resistance which matter

opposes to the current_of life sent tlir_Qugli it,

ancTtEe;

"explosive force due to an unstable

equilibrium ofTendencies carried by the vital

imputse~within itself Both unite in mating

the thrust of life divide in more and more

diverging but complementary directions, each

emphasizing some distinct aspect of its originalwealth. Mr. Bergson confines himself to the

branches of the first order plant, animal, and

man. And in the course of a minute and

searching discussion he shows us the character-

1





istics of these lines in the moods or qualities

signified bythe three words

torpor,instinct,

and intelligence: the vegetable kingdom con

structing and storing explosives which the

animal expends, and man creating a nervous

system for himself which permits him to con

vert the

expenseinto analysis. Let us leave

aside, as we must, the many suggestive views

scattered lavishly about, the many flashes of

light which fall on all faces of the problem,

and let us confine ourselves to seeing how we

get a theory of knowledge from this doctrine.

There we have yet another proof of the

striking and fertile originality of the new

philosophy.

More than one objection has been brought

against Mr. Bergson on this head. That is

quite natural: how could such a novelty be

exactly understood at once? It is also very

desirable; it is the demands for enlightenment

which lead a doctrine to full consciousness of

itself, to precision and perfection. But we

must be afraid of false objections, those which

arise from an obstinate translation of the new

philosophy into an old language steeped in

a different metaphysic. With what has Mr.

Bergson been reproached? With misunder

standing reason, with ruining positive science,



TEACHING 113

with being caught in the illusion of getting

knowledge otherwise than by intelligence, or

of thinking otherwise than by thought; in

short, of falling into a vicious circle by making

intellectualism turn round upon itself. Not

one of these reproaches has any foundation.

Let us begin by a few preliminary remarks

to clear the ground. First of all, there is one

ridiculous objection which I quote only to

record. I mean that which suspects at the

bottom of the theories which we are going to

discuss some dark background, some pre

possession of irrational mysticism. On the

contrary, the truth is, we have here, perhaps

better than anywhere, the spectacle of pure

thought face to face with things. But it is

a complete thought, not thought reduced to

some partial functions, but sufficiently sure of

its critical power to sacrifice none of its re

sources. Here, we may say, really is the gen

uine positivism, which reinstates all spiritual

reality. It does not in any way lead to a mis

understanding or depreciation of science.

Even where contingency and relativity are

most visible in it, in the domain of inert matter,

Mr. Bergson goes so far as to say that physical

science touches an absolute. It is true that it

touches this absolute rather than seesit.

More



A NEW PHILOSOPHY

particularly it perceives all its reactions on a

systemof

representativeforms which it

presents to it, and observes the effect on the veil of

theory with which it envelops it. At certain

moments, all the same, the veil becomes

almost transparent. And in any case the

scholar s

thought guessesand

grazes realityin the curve drawn by the succession of its

increasing syntheses. But there are two

orders of science. Formerly it was from the

mathematician that we borrowed the ideal of

evidence. Hence came the inclination always

to seek the most certain knowledge from the

most abstract side. The temptation was to

make a kind of less severe and rigorous mathe

matics of biology itself. Now if such a method

suits the study of inert matter because in a

manner geometrical, so much so that our

knowledge of it thus acquired is more incom

plete than inexact, this is not at all the case

for the things of life. Here, if we were to

conduct scientific research always in the same

grooves and according to the same formulae,

we should immediately encounter symbolism

and relativity. For life is progress, whilst the

geometrical method is commensurable only

with things. Mr. Bergson is aware of this;

and his rare merit has been to disengage



TEACHING 115

specific originality from biology, while elevat

ing it to a typical and standard science.

But let us come to the heart of the problem.

What was Kant s point of departure in the

theory of knowledge? In seeking to define

the structure of the mind according to the

traces of itself which it must have left in

its works, and in proceeding by a reflective

analysis ascending from a fact to its con

ditions, he could only regard intelligence as a

thing made, a fixed system of categories

and principles.

Mr. Bergson adopts an inverse attitude.

Intelligence is a product of evolution: we see

it slowly and uninterruptedly constructed

along a line which rises through the vertebrates

to man. Such a point of view is the only one

which conforms to the real nature of things,

and the actual conditions of reality; the more

we think of it, the more we perceive that the

theory of knowledge and the theory of life are

bound up with one another. Now what do

we conclude from this point of view? Life,considered in the direction of

"

knowledge,"

evolves on two diverging lines which at first

are confused, then gradually separate, and

finally end in two opposed forms of organiza

tion,

intelligence

and instinct. Several con-




trary potentialities interpenetrated at their

common source,but of this source each of

these kinds of activity preserves or rather

accentuates only one tendency; and it will be

easy to mark its dual character.

Instinct is sympathy; it has no clear con

sciousness of itself; it does not know how to

reflect ; it is hardly capable of varying its steps ;

but it operates with incomparable certainty

because it remains lodged in things, in com

munion with their rhythm and with inner

feeling of them. Thehistory

of animals in

this respect supplies many remarkable ex

amples which Mr. Bergson analyzes and dis

cusses in detail. As much might be said of the

work which produces a living body, and of

the effort which presides over its growth,

maintenance, and functions. Take a natural

philosopher who has long breathed the atmos

phere of the laboratory, who has by long prac

tice acquired what we call"

experience"

;he

has a kind of intimate feeling for his

instruments, their resources, their move

ments, their working tendencies; he perceives

them as extensions of himself; he possesses

them as groups of habitual actions, thus dis

coursing by manipulations as easily and spon-

taneouslv as others discourse in calculation.



TEACHING 117

Doubtless that is only an image ; but transpose

it and generalize it, and it will help you to under

stand the kind of action which divines instinct.

But intelligence is something quite different.

We are talking, of course, of the analytic and

synthetic intelligence which we use in our acts

of current thought, which works throughout

our daily action and forms the fundamental

thread of our scientific operations. I need not

here go back to the criticism of its ordinary

proceedings. But I must now note the serv

ice which suits them, the domain in which they

apply and are valid, and what they teach us

thereby about the meaning, reach, and natural

task of intelligence.

Whilst instinct vibrates in sympathetic har

mony with life, it is about inert matter that

intelligence is granted; it is a rider to our

faculty of action; it triumphs in geometry;

it feels at home among the objects in which

our industry finds its supports and its tools.

In a word,"

our logic is primarily the logic of

solids."

*

But if we enter the vital order its

incompetence is manifestly apparent.

It is very significant that deduction should

be so impotent in biology. Still more im

potent is it perhaps in matters of art or

1

Preface to Creative Evolution.




religion; whilst, on the contrary, it works

marvels so long as it has only to foresee movements or transformations in bodies. What

does this mean, if not that intelligence and

materiality go together, that language with its

analytic steps is regulated by the movements

of matter? Philosophy once again then mustleave it behind, for the duty of philosophy is

to consider everything in its relation to life.

Do not conclude, however, that the philoso

pher s duty is to renounce intelligence, place

it undertutelage,

or abandon it to the blind

suggestions of feeling and will. It has not

even the right to do so. Instinct, with us

who have evolved along the grooves of in

telligence, has remained too weak to be suffi

cient for us. Besides,intelligence

is the

onlypath by which light could dawn in the bosom

of primitive darkness. But let us look at

present reality in all its complexity, all its

wealth. Round intelligence itself exists a/

halo of instinct. This halo represents the

remains of the first nebulous vapor at the

expense of which intelligence was constituted

like a brilliantly condensed nucleus; and it is

still to-day the atmosphere which gives it life,

the fringe of touch, and delicate probing,

inspiring contact and divining sympathy,



TEACHING 119

which we see in play in the phenomena of

discovery, as also in the acts of that"

atten

tion to life," and that"

sense of reality"

which

is the soul of good sense, so widely distinct

from common-sense. And the peculiar task

of the philosopher is to reabsorb intelligence

in instinct, or rather to reinstate instinct in

intelligence; or better still, to win back to the

heart of intelligence all the initial resources

which it must have sacrificed. This is what

is meant by return to, the primitive, and the

immediate, to reality and life. This is the

meaning of intuition.

Certainly the task is difficult. We at once

suspect a vicious circle. How can we go

beyond intelligence except by intelligence

itself? We are apparently inside our thought,

as incapable of coming out of it as is a balloon

of rising above the atmosphere. True, but on

this reasoning we could just as well prove that

it is impossible for us to acquire any new habit

whatsoever, impossible for life to grow and

go beyond itself continually.We must avoid drawing false conclusions

from the simile of the balloon. The question

here is to know what are the real limits of the

atmosphere. It is certain that the synthetic

and critical

intelligence,left to its own




strength, remains imprisoned in a circle from

whichthere is no

escape.But action removes the barrier. If intelli

gence accepts the risk of taking the leap into

the phosphorescent fluid which bathes it, and

to which it is not altogether foreign, since it

has broken off from it and in it dwell the

complementary powers of the understanding,

intelligence will soon become adapted and so

will only be lost for a moment to reappear

greater, stronger, and of fuller content. It is

action again under the name of experience

which removes the danger of illusion or

giddiness, it is action which verifies; by a

practical demonstration, by an effort of en

during maturation which tests the idea in

intimate contact with reality and judges it

by its fruits.

It always falls therefore to intelligence to

pronounce the grand verdict in the sense that

only that can be called true which will finally

satisfy it; but we mean an intelligence duly

enlarged and transformed by the very effect

of the action it has lived. Thus the objection

of"

irrationalism"

directed against the new

philosophy falls to the ground.

The objection of"

non-morality"

fares no

better. But it has been made, and people



TEACHING 121

have thought fit to accuse Mr. Bergson s work

of being the too calm production of an intel

ligence too indifferent, too coldly lucid, too

exclusively curious to see and understand, un

troubled and unthrilled by the universal drama

of life, by the tragic reality of evil. On the

other hand, not without contradiction, the

new philosophy has been called"

romantic,"

and people have tried to find in it the essen

tial traits of romanticism: its predilection for

feeling and imagination, its unique anxiety

for vital intensity, its recognized right to all

which is to be, whence its radical inability to

establish a hierarchy of moral qualifications.

Strange reproach! The system in question is

not yet presented to us as a finished system.

Its author manifests a plain desire to classify

his problems. And he is certainly right in

proceeding so: there is a time for everything,

and on occasion we must learn to be just an

eye focused upon being. But that does not

at all exclude the possibility of future works,

treatingin

dueorder of the

problemof

humandestiny, and perhaps even in the work so far

completed we may descry some attempts to

bring this future within ken.

But universal evolution, though creative, is

not for all that

quixotic

or anarchist. It forms



A NEW PHILOSOPHY

a sequence. It_is a becomingLwith direction,

undoubtedly due,not to the

^tratioi^jof_aclearly preconceived goal, or the guidance of

an outer law, but to the actual tendency of

the original thrust. In spite of the stationary

eddies or momentary backwashes we observe

here and there, its stream moves in ji definite

direction, ever swelling and broadening. For

the spectator who regards the general sweep

of the current, evolutioiijs growth. On the

other hand, he who thinks this growth now

ended is under a simple delusion:"

The gates

of the future stand wideopen."

*In the stage

at present attained man is leading; he marks

the culminating point at which creation con

tinues; in him, life has already succeeded, at

least up to a certain point ;from him onwards

it advances with consciousness capable of re

flection; is it not for that very reason re

sponsible for the result? Life, according to

the newphilosophy,Jisji continual creation of

what is new: new be it well understood in

the sense of growth and progress in relation to

what has gone before. Life, in a word, is

mental travel, ascent in a path of growing

spiritualization. Such at least is the intense

desire, and such the first tendency which




TEACHING

launched and still inspires it. But it may

faint, halt, or travel down the hill. This is an

undeniable fact; and once recognized does it

not awake in us the presentiment of a directing

law immanent in vital effort, a law doubtless

not to be found in any code, nor yet binding

through the stern behest of mechanical neces

sity, but a law which finds definition at every

moment, and at every moment also marks a

direction of progress, being as it were the

shifting tangent to the curve of becoming?

Let us add that according to the new phi

losophy the whole of our past survives forever

in us, and by means of us results in action.

It is then literally true that our acts do to a

certain extent involve the whole universe, and

its whole history: the act which we make it

accomplish will exist henceforward forever,

and will forever tinge universal duration with

its indelible shade. Does not that imply an

imperious, urgent, solemn, and tragic problem

of action? Nay, more; memory makes a

persistent reality of evil, as of good. Whereare we to find the means to abolish and re-

absorb the evil? What in the individual is

\ called memory becomes tradition and joint

responsibility in the race.

On the other hand, a directing law is im-



A NEW PHILOSOPHY

manent in life, but in the shape of an appeal

to endless transcendence. Indealing

with

this future transcendent to our daily life, with

this further shore of present experience, where

are we to seek the inspiring strength? And

is there not ground for asking ourselves

whether intuitions have not arisen here and

there in the course of history, lighting up the

dark road of the future for us with a prophetic

ray of dawn? It is at this point that the new

philosophy would find place for the problem of

religion.

But this word"

religion,"which has not

come once so far from Mr. Bergson s pen,

coming now from mine, warns me that it is

time to end. No man to-day would be justi

fied in foreseeing the conclusions to which the

doctrine of creative evolution will one day un

doubtedly lead on this point. More than any

other, I must forget here what I myself mayhave elsewhere tried to do in this order of

ideas. But it was impossible not to feel the

approach of the temptation. Mr. Bergson s

work is extraordinarily suggestive. His books,

so measured in tone, so tranquil in harmony,

awaken in us a mystery of presentiment and

imagination; they reach the hidden retreats

where the springs of consciousness well up.



TEACHING 125

Long after we have closed them we are shaken

within;strangely

moved, we listen to the

deepening echo, passing on and on. However

valuable already their explicit contents may

be, they reach still further than they aimed.

It is impossible to tell what latent germs they

foster. It is impossible to guess what lies be

hind the boundless distance of the horizons

they expose. But this at least is sure: these

books have verily begun a new work in the

history of human thought.



ADDITIONAL EXPLANATIONS

I

MR. BERGSON S WORK AND THEGENERAL DIRECTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT

A BROAD survey of the new philosophy was

bound to be somewhat rapid and summary;

and now that this is completed it will doubt

less not be superfluous to come back, on the

same plan as before, to some more important

or more difficult individual points, and to

examine by themselves the most prominent

centers on which we should focus the light

of our attention. Not that I intend to probe

in minute detail the folds and turns of a doc

trine which admits of infinite development:

how can I claim to exhaust a work of such

profound thought that the least passing ex

ample employed takes its place as a par

ticular study? Still less do I wish to under-

126



BERGSON & CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT 127

take a kind of analytic resume; no undertak

ingcould be less

profitablethan that of ar

ranging paragraph headings to repeat too

briefly, and therefore obscurely, what a thinker

has said without any extravagance of lan

guage, yet with every requisite explanation.

The critic s true task, as I understand it,

in no way consists in drawing up a table of

contents strewn with qualifying notes. His

task is to read and enable others to read

between the lines, between the chapters, and

between the successive works, what constitutes

the dynamic tie between them, all that the

linear form of writing and language has not

allowed the author himself to elucidate.

His task is, as far as possible, to master the

accompaniment of underlying thought which

produced the resonant atmosphere of the

inquirer s intuition, the rhythm and toning

of the image, resulting in the shade of light

which falls upon his vision. His task, in a

word, is to help understanding, and therefore

to point out and anticipate the misunder

standings to be feared. Now it seems to me

that there are a few points round which the

errors of interpretation more naturally gather,

producing some astounding misconceptions of

Mr. Bergson s philosophy. It is these points




only that I propose to clear up. But at the

same time I shall use the opportunity to

supply information about authorities, which

I have hitherto deliberately omitted, to avoid

riddling with references pages which were

primarily intended to impart a general

impression.Let us begin by glancing at the milieu of

thought in which Mr. Bergson s philosophy

must have had birth. For the last thirty years

new currents are traceable. In what direction

dothey go?

And what distance havethey

already gone? What, in short, are the

intellectual characteristics of our time? Wemust endeavor to distinguish the deeper

tendencies, those which herald and prepare

the near future.

One of the essential and frequently cited

features of the generation in which Taine and

Renan were the most prominent leaders was

the passionate, enthusiastic, somewhat ex

clusive and intolerant cult of positive science.

This science, in its days of pride, was con

sidered unique, displayed on a plane by it

self, always uniformly competent, capable of

gripping any object whatever with the same

strength, and of inserting it in the thread

of one and the same unbroken connection.




The dream of that time, despite all verbal

palliations, was a universal science of mathe

matics: mathematics, of course, with their

bare and brutal rigor softened and shaded

off, where feasible; if possible, supple and

sensitive; in ideal, delicate, buoyant, and

judicious; but mathematics governed from

end to end by an equal necessity. Conceived

as the sole mistress of truth, this science was

expected in days to come to fulfil all the needs

of man, and unreservedly to take the place

of ancient spiritual discipline. Genuine phi

losophy had had its day: all metaphysics

seemed deception and fantasy, a simple play

of empty formulse or puerile dreams, a myth

ical procession of abstraction and phantom;

religion itself paled before science, as poetry

of the gray morning before the splendor of

the rising sun.

However, after all this pride came the turn

of humility, and humility of the very lowest.

This deified science, borne down in its hour

of triumph by too heavy a weight, had

necessarily been recognized as powerless to

go beyond the order of relations, and radically

incapable of telling us the origin, end, and

basis of things. It analyzed the conditions of

phenomena, but was ill-suited ever to grasp




any real cause, or any deep essence. Further,

it became the Unknowable, before which the

human mind could only halt in despair. And

in this way destitution arose out of ambition

itself, since thought, after trusting too ex

clusively to its geometrical strength, was

compelled at the end of its effort to confess

itself beaten when confronted with the only

questions to which no man may ever be

indifferent.

This double attitude is no longer that of

the contemporary generation. The prestige

of illusion has vanished. In the religion of

science we see now nothing but idolatry. The

haughty affirmation of yesterday appears to

day, not as expressing a positive fact or a

result duly established, but as bringing for

ward a thesis of perilous and unconscious

metaphysics. Let us go even further. If true

intelligence is mental expansion and aptitude

for understanding widely different things, each

in its originality, to the same degree, we must

say that the claim to reduce reality to one

only of its modes, to know it in one only of

its forms, is an unintelligent claim. That is,

in brief formula, the verdict of the present

generation. Not, of course, that it in any

way misconceives or disdains the true value




of science, whether as an instrument of action

for the conquest of nature, or as intelligible

language, allowing us to know our where

abouts in things and"

talk"

them.

It is aware that in all circumstances positive

methods have their evidence to produce, and

that, where they pronounce within the limits

of their power, nothing can stand against their

verdict. But it considers first of all that

science was conceived of late under much too

stiff and narrow a form, under the obsession

of too abstract a mathematical ideal which

corresponds to one aspect of reality only, andthat the shallowest. And it considers after

wards that science, even when broadened and

made flexible, being concerned only with what

is, with fact and datum, remains radically

powerless to solve the problem of human life.

Nowhere does science penetrate to the very

depth of things, and there is nothing in the

world but"

things."

Experience has shown where the dream of

universalmathematics

leads us. Number is

driven to the heart of phenomena and nature

dissected with this delicate scalpel. Speaking

in more general terms, we adopt spatial rela

tion as the perfect example of intelligible rela

tion. I do not wish to

denythe use of such a




method now and again, the services it may

render, or the beauty of construction peculiar

to the systems it inspires. But we must see

what price we pay for these advantages. Do

we choose geometry for an informing and

regulating science? The more we advance

towards the concrete and the living, the more

we feel the necessity of altering the pure

mathematical type. The sciences, as they get

further from inert matter, unless they agree

to reform, pale and weaken; they become

vague, impotent, ansemic; they touch little but

the trite surface of their object, the body, not

the soul;in them symbolism, artifice, and rela

tivity become increasingly evident; at length,

arbitrary and conventional elements crop up

and devour them. In a word, the claim to

treat the living as inert matter conduces to the

misconception in life of life itself, and the

retention of nothing but the material waste.

This experience furnishes us with a lesson.

There is not so much one science as several

sciences, each distinguished by an autonomous

method, and divided into two great kingdoms.

Let us therefore from the outset follow Mr.

Bergson in tracing a very sharp line of de

marcation between the inert and the living.

Two orders of knowledge will thereby become




separate, one in which the frames of geometri

cal understanding are in place, the other where

new means and a new attitude are required.

The essential task of the present hour will

now appear to us in a precise light; it will

henceforward consist, without any disregard

of a glorious past, in an effort to found as

specifically distinct methods of instruction

those sciences which take for objects the

successive moments of life in its different

degrees, biology, psychology, sociology ;then

in an effort to reconstruct, setting out from

these new sciences and according to their

spirit, the like of what ancient philosophy had

attempted, setting out from geometry and

mechanics. By so doing we shall succeed in

throwing knowledge open to receive all the

wealth of reality, while at the same time weshall reinstate the sense of mystery and the

thrill of higher anxieties. A further result

will be that the phantom of the Unknowable

will be exorcised, since it no longer represents

anything but the relative and momentarylimit of each method, the portion of being

which escapes its partial grip.

This is one of the first controlling ideas of

the contemporary generation. Others result

from it. Moreparticularly,

it is for the same




body of motives, in the same sense, and with

the same restrictions, that we distrust intel-

lectualism; I mean the tendency to live

uniquely by intelligence, to think as if the

whole of thought consisted in analytic, clear

and reasoning understanding.

Onceagain,

it is not aquestion

of some

blind abandonment to sentiment, imagination,

or will, nor do we claim to restrict the legiti

mate rights of intellectuality in judgment.

But around critical reason there is a quick

ening atmospherein which dwell the

powersof intuition, there is a half-light of gradual

tones in which insertion into reality is ef

fected. If by rationalism we mean the atti

tude which consists in cabining ourselves

within the zone of geometrical light in which

language evolves, we must admit that ration

alism supposes something other than itself,

that it hangs suspended by a generating act

which escapes it.

The method therefore which we seek to

employ everywhere to-day is experience; but

complete experience, anxious to neglect no

aspect of being nor any resource of mind;

shaded experience, not extending on the

surface only, in a homogeneous and uniform

manner; on the contrary, an experience




distributed in depth over multiple planes,

adoptinga thousand different forms to

adaptitself to the different kinds of problems; in

short, a creative and informing experience, a

veritable genesis, a genuine action of thought,

a work and movement of life by which the

guiding principles, forms of intelligibility,

and criteria of verification obtain birth and

stability in habits. And here again it is by

borrowing Mr. Bergson s own formula from

him that we shall most accurately describe

the new spirit.

That the attitude and fundamental pro

cedure of this new spirit are in no way a

return to skepticism or a reaction against

thought cannot be better demonstrated than

by this resurrection of metaphysics, this re

naissance of idealism, which is certainly one

of the most distinctive features of our epoch.

Undoubtedly philosophy in France has never

known so prosperous and so pregnant a

moment. Notwithstanding, it is not a return

to the old dreams of dialectic construction.

Everything is regarded from the point of

view of life, and there is a tendency more and

more to recognize the primacy of spiritual

activity. But we wish to understand and

employ this activity and this life in all its




wealth, in all its degrees, and by all its func

tions: we wish to think with the whole of

thought, and go to the truth with the whole

of our soul; and the reason of which we

recognize the sovereign weight is reason laden

with its complete past history.

And what is that,really,

but realism?

Byrealism I mean the gift of ourselves to reality,

the work of concrete realization, the effort to

convert every idea into action, to regulate the

idea by the action as much as the action by

the idea, to live what we think and think

what we live. But that is positivism, you

will say; certainly it is positivism. But how

changed! Far from considering as positive

only that which can be an object of sensa

tion or calculation, we begin by greeting

the great spiritual realities with this title.

The deep and living aspiration of our day is

in everything to seek the soul, the soul which

specifies and quickens, seek it by an effort

towards the revealing sympathy which is

genuine intelligence, seek it in the concrete,

without dissolving thought in dreams or

language, without losing contact with the

body or critical control, seek it, in fine, as

the most real and genuine part of being.

Hence its return to questions which were




lately declared out of date and closed; hence

its taste for problems of aesthetics and mo

rality, its close siege of social and religious

problems, its homesickness for a faith har

monizing the powers of action and the powers

of thought; hence its restless desire to hark

back to tradition and discipline.

A new philosophy was required to answer

this new way of looking at things. Already,

in 1867, Ravaisson in his celebrated Report

wrote these prophetic lines :

"

Many signs

permit us to foresee in the near future a

philosophical epoch of which the general

character will be the predominance of what

may be called spiritualist realism or positiv

ism, having as generating principle the con

sciousness which the mind has in itself of an

existence recognized as being the source

and support of every other existence, being

none other than its action."

This prophetic view was further commented

on in a work where Mr. Bergson speaks with

just praise of this shrewd and penetratingsense of what was coming:

"

What could be

bolder or more novel than to come and pre

dict to the physicists that the inert will be

explained by the living, to biologists that

lifewill only be understood by thought, to




philosophers that generalities are not philo

sophic?

" x

But let us give each his due. What Ravais-

son had only anticipated Mr. Bergson himself

accomplishes, with a precision which gives

body to the impalpable and floating breath of

first

inspiration,

with a

depthwhich renews

both proof and theses alike, with a creative

originality which prevents the critic who is

anxious for justice and precision from insist

ing on any researches establishing connection

of thought.

One reason for the popularity to-day en

joyed by this new philosophy is doubtless to

be found in the very tendencies of the milieu

in which it is produced and in the aspirations

which work it. But, after once remarking

these desires, we must further not forget that

Mr. Bergson has contributed more than any

one else to awaken them, determine them, and

make them become conscious of themselves.

Let us therefore try to understand in itself

and by itself the work of genius of which just

now we were seeking the dawning gleams.

What synthetic formula will be best able to

1Notice on the Life and Works of M. Felix Ravaisson-

Molien,in the

Reportsof the

Academyof

Moraland Political

Sciences, 1904.




tell us the essential direction of its movement?

I will borrow it from the author himself:"

It

seems to me," he writes,1 "

that metaphysics

are trying at this moment to simplify them

selves, to come nearer to life." Every phi

losophy tends to become incarnate in a sys

tem which constitutes for it a kind of body

of analysis.

Regarded literally, it appears to be an in

finite complication, a complex construction

with a thousand alcoves of high architecture,"

in which measures have been taken to pro

vide ample lodging for all problems." Donot let us be deceived by this appearance: it

signifies only that language is incommensurable

with thought, that speech admits of endless

multiplication in approximations incapable of

exhausting their object. But before construct

ing such a body for itself, all philosophy is a

soul, a mind, and begins with the simple unit

of a generating intuition. Here is the fitti

point at which to see its essence; this is what

determines it much better than its conceptual

expression, which is always contingent and

incomplete." A philosophy worthy of the

1

Philosophic Intuition in the Revue de Metaphysique et de

Morale, November 1911.

Ibid.




name has never said but one thing; and that

thing it has rather attempted to say than

actually said. And it has only said one thing,

because it has only seen one point: and

that was not so much vision as contact; this

contact supplied an impulse, this impulse a

movement, and if this movement, which is a

kind of vortex of a certain particular form, is

only visible to our eyes by what it has picked

up on its path, it is no less true that other

dust might equally well have been raised, and

that it would still have been the same vortex."l

Hence comes the fact that a philosophy is

at bottom much more independent of its natal

environment than one might at first suppose;

hence also the fact that ancient philosophies,

though apparently relative to a science which

is out of date, remain always living and

worthy of study.

What, then, is the original intuition of Mr.

Bergson s philosophy, the creative intuition

whence it comes forth? We cannot hesitate

long: it is the intuition of duration. That is

the perspective center to which we must inde-

fatigably return; that is the principle which

we must labor to expose in its full light; and

1

Philosophic Intuition in the Revue de Metaphysique et de

Morale, November 1911.




that is, finally, the source of light which will

illumine us.

Nowaphilosophy

is notonly an

expressed intuition; it is further and above

all an acting intuition, gradually determined

and realized, and tested by its explanatory

works; and it is by its fruits that we can

understand andjudge

it. Hence the review

upon which we are entering.



II

IMMEDIACY

THE philosopher s first duty is in clear lan

guage to declare his starting-point, with what

a mathematician would call the"

tangent to

the origin"

of the path along which he is

traveling, as afterwards the critic s first duty

is to describe this initial attitude. I have

therefore first of all to indicate the directing

idea of the new philosophy. But it is not a

question of extracting a quintessence, or of

fencing the soul of doctrine within a few sum

mary formulae. A system is not to be resumed

in a phrase, for every proposition isolated is

a proposition falsified. I wish merely to eluci

date the methodical principle which inspires

the beginning of Mr. Bergson s philosophy.

To philosophy itself falls the task and

belongs the right to define itself gradually

as it becomes constituted. On this point,

an anticipation of experience seems hardly142



IMMEDIACY 143

possible; here, as elsewhere, the finding of a

synthetic formula is a final rather than pre

liminary question. However, we are obliged

from the outset of the work to determine the

program of the inquiry, if only to direct

our research. It is the same on the threshold

of every science. There, it is true, the analogy

ceases. For in any science properly speaking

the determination of beginning consists in the

indication of an object, and a matter, and

beyond that, to each new object a new science

reciprocally corresponds, the existence of the

one involving the legitimacy of the other.

But if the various sciences I mean the posi

tive sciences divide different objects thus be

tween them, philosophy cannot, in its turn,

come forward as a particular science, having

a distinct object, the designation of which

would be sufficient to characterize and circum

scribe it. Such was always the traditional

conception: such will ours continue to be.

For, as a matter of fact, every object has a

philosophy and all matter can be regarded

philosophically. In short, philosophy is

chiefly a way of perceiving and thinking, an

attitude and a proceeding: the peculiar and

specific in it is more an intuition than a con

tent, a spirit rather than a domain.




What, then, is the characteristic function of

philosophy, at least its initial function, that

which marks its opening?

To criticise the works of knowledge spon

taneously effected; that is to say, to scrutinize

their direction, reach, and conditions: that is

to-day the unanimous answer of philosophers

when questioned about the goal of their labors.

In other terms, what they study is not so much

such and such a particular"

thing"

as the

relation of mind to each of the realities to be

studied. Their object, if we must employ the

word, is knowledge itself, it is the act of knowing regarded from the point of view of its

meaning and value. Philosophy thus appears

as a new"

order"

of knowledge, co-extensive

with what is knowable, as a kind of knowledge

of the second degree, in which it is less a question of learning than of understanding, in

which we aim at progressing in depth rather

than in extent; not effort to extend the

quantity of knowledge, but reflection on the

quality of this knowledge. Spontaneousthought vulgar or scientific is a direct,

simple, and practical thought turned towards

things and partial to useful results; seeking

what is formulable rather than what is true,

or at least so fond of formulae which can be



IMMEDIACY 145

handled, manipulated, or transmitted, that it is

always tempted to see the truth in them; a

thought which, moreover, sets out from more

or less unguarded postulates, abandons itself

to the motive impulses of habits contracted,

and goes straight on indefinitely without self-

examination. Philosophy, on the contrary,

desires to be thought about thought, thought

retracing its life and work, knowledge labor

ing to know itself, fact which aspires to fact

about itself, mental effort to become free, to

become entirely transparent and luminous in

its own eyes, and, if need be, to effect self-

reform by dissipating its natural illusions.

What we have before our eyes then are the

initial postulates themselves, the first spon

taneous thoughts, the obscure origins of

reason; and we are proceeding towards a

point of departure rather than arrival.

The new philosophy does not refuse to carry

out this first critical task; but it carries it out

in its own way after determining more pre

ciselythe real conditions of the

problem.At

the hour when methodical research begins, the

philosopher s mind is not clean-swept; and it

would be chimerical to wish to place oneself

from the beginning, by some act of tran

scendence, outside common thought. This




thought cannot be inspected and judged from

outside. It constitutes, whether we wish it

or no, the sole concrete and positive point of

departure. Let us add that common-sense

constitutes also our sole point of insertion into

reality. It can only then be a question of

purifying it, not in any way of replacing it.

But we must distinguish in it what is pure

fact, and what is ulterior arrangement, in order

to see what are the problems which really are

presented, and what are, on the contrary, the

false problems, the illusory problems, those

which relate only to our artifices of language.The search for facts is then the first neces

sary moment of all philosophy.

But common thought comes before us at

the outset as a piece of very composite alluvial

ground. It is a beginning of positive science,

and also a residue of all philosophical opinions

which have had some vogue. That, however,

is not its primary basis. Primum vivere,

deinde philosophari, says the proverb. In

certain respects,

"

speculationis

a luxury,whilst action is a

necessity."But

"

life re

quires us to apprehend things in the relation

they have to our needs."2

Hence comes the


1

Laughter, p. 151.



IMMEDIACY 147

fundamental utilitarianism of common-sense.

Therefore if we wish to define it in itself and

for itself, and no longer as a first approximation of such and such a system of metaphysics,

it appears to us no longer as rudimentaryscience and philosophy, but as an organiza

tion of thought in view of practical life. Thus

it is that outside all speculative opinion it is

effectively lived by all. Its proper language,

we may say, is the language of customary

perception and mechanical fabrication, there

fore a language relative to action, made to

express action, modeled upon action, trans

lating things by the relations they maintain

to our action; I mean our corporal and

synthetic action, which very evidently implies

thought, since it is a question of the action

of a reasonable being, but which thus contains a thought which is itself eminently

practical.

However, we are here regarding common-

sense considered as a source of fact. Its

utilitarianism thenbecomes

a kind of

spontaneous metaphysics from which we must

detach ourselves. But is it not the very task

of positive science to execute this work of

purification? Nothing of the kind, despite

appearances and despite intentions. Let us




examine more closely. The general categories

of common thought, according to Mr. Berg-

son,1

remain those of science; the main roads

traced by our senses through the continuity

of reality are still those along which science

will pass; perception is an infant science and

science an adult perception; so much so that

customary knowledge and scientific knowl

edge, both of them destined to prepare our

action upon things, are of necessity two

visions of the same kind, though of unequal

precision and reach. It does not follow that

science does not practise a certain disinterest

edness as far as immediate mechanical utility

is concerned; it does not follow that it has no

value as knowledge. But it does not set itself

genuinely free from the habits contracted in

common experience, and to inform its research it preserves the postulates of common-

sense; so that it always grasps things by their"

actable"

side, by their point of contact with

our faculty for action, under the forms by

which we handlethem conceptually

orprac

tically, and all it attains of reality is that by

which nature is a possible object of language

or industry.

^Philosophic Intuition in the Metaphysical and Moral Re

view, November 1911, p. 825.



IMMEDIACY 149

Let us turn now towards another aspect of

natural thought, to discover in it the germof the necessary criticism. By the side of"

common-sense," which is the first rough-

draft of positive science, there is"

good sense,"

which differs from it profoundly, and marks

the beginning of what we shall later on call

philosophic intuition.1

It is a sense of what

is real, concrete, original, living, an art of

equilibrium and precision, a fine touch for

complexities, continually feeling like the an

tennae of some insects. It contains a certain

distrust of the logical faculty in respect of

itself;it wages incessant war upon intellectual

automatism, upon ready-made ideas and linear

deduction; above all, it is anxious to locate

and to weigh, without any oversights; it

arrests the development of every principle and

every method at the precise point where too

brutal an application would offend the delicacy

of reality; at every moment it collects the

whole of our experience and organizes it in

view of the present. It is, in a word, thoughtwhich keeps its freedom, activity which re

mains awake, suppleness of attitude, attention

1

Cf. an address on Good Sense and Classical Studies, de

livered by Mr. Bergson at the Concours general prize distribu

tion, 30th July 1895.




to life, an ever-renewed adjustment to suit

ever-new situations.

Its revealing virtue is derived from this

moving contact with fact, and this living ef

fort of sympathy. This is what we must

tend to transpose from the practical to the

speculative order.

What, then, will be for us the beginning

of philosophy? After taking cognizance of

common utilitarianism, and to emerge from

the relativity in which it buries us, we seek a

departure-point, a criterion, something which

decides the raising of inquiry. Where are weto find such a principle, except in the very

action of thought ;I mean, this time, its action

of profound life independent of all practical

aim? We shall thus only be imitating the

example of Descartes when solving the problem of temporary doubt. What we shall term

return to the immediate, the primitive, the

pure fact, will be the taking of each percep

tion considered as an act lived, a colored mo

ment of the Cogito, and this will be for us acriterion and departure-point.

Let us specify this point. Immediate data

or primitive data or pure data are appre

hended by us under forms of disinterested

action;Imean that they are first of

alllived



IMMEDIACY 151

rather than conceived, that before becoming

material for science, they appear as momentsof life; in brief, that perception of them pre

cedes their use.

It is at this stage previous to language that

we are by these pure data in intimate com

munion withreality

itself, and the whole of

our critical task is to return to them through

a regressive analysis, the goal of which is

gradually to make our clear intelligence equal

to our primordial intuition. The latter al

ready constitutes a thought, a preconceptual

thought which is the intrinsic light of action,

which is action itself so far as it is luminous.

Thus there is no question here of restricting

in any degree the part played by thought, but

only of distinguishing between the perceptive

and theoretic functions of mind.

What is"

the image"

of which Mr. Berg-

son speaks at the beginning of Matter and

Mind except, when grasped in its first move

ment, the flash of conscious existence"

in

which the act of knowledge coincides with the

generating act ofreality"?

1

Let us forget all philosophical controversies

about realism and idealism; let us try to

1

Report of the French Philosophical Society, philosophical

vocabulary, article"

Immediate."




reconstruct for ourselves a simplicity, a

virginal and candid glance, freeing us from

the habits contracted in the course of practi

cal life. These then are our"images":

not

things presented externally, nor states felt

internally, not portraits of exterior beings nor

projections of internal moods, but appear

ances, in the etymological sense of the word,

appearances lived simply, without our being

distinguished from them, as yet neither sub

jective nor objective, marking a moment of

consciousness previous to the work of reflec

tion, from which proceeds the duality of sub

ject and object. And such also, in every

order, appear the "immediate feelings"; as

action in birth, previous to language.1

Why depart from the immediate thus con

ceived as action and life? Because it is quite

impossible to do otherwise, for every initial

fact can be only such a pulsation of conscious

ness in its lived act, and the fundamental and

primitive direction of the least word, were it in

an enunciation of a problem or a doubt, can only

be such a direction of life and action. And

we must certainly accord to this immediacy a

value of absolute knowledge, since it realizes

the coincidence of being and knowledge.

1

Cf. Matter and Memory, Foreword to the 7th edition.



IMMEDIACY 153

But let us not think that the perception of

immediacy is simple passive perception, that it

is sufficient to open our eyes to obtain it, to

day when our utilitarian education is completed

and has passed into the state of habit. There

is a difference between common experience

and the initial action oflife;

the first is a

practical limitation of the second. Hence it

follows that a previous criticism is necessary

to return from one to the other, a criticism

always in activity, always open as a way of

progressive investigation, always ready

for

the reiteration and the renewal of effort.

In this task of purification there is doubt

less always to be feared an illusion of remain

ing in the primitive stage. By what criteria,

by what signs can we recognize that we have

touched the goal? Pure fact is shown to be

such on the one hand because it remains in

dependent of all theoretical symbolism, be

cause the critique of language allows it to

exist thus as an indissoluble residue, because

we are unable not to"

live"

it, even when we

free ourselves from the anxiety of utility; on

the other hand, because it dominates all sys

tems, and imposes itself equally upon them all

as the common source from which they derive

by diverging analyses, and in which they be-




come reconciled. Assuredly, to attain it, to

extricate it, we mustappeal

to the revela

tions of science, to the exercise of deliberate

thought. But this employment of analysis

against analysis does not in any way consti

tute a circle, for it tends only to destroy

prejudices which have become unconscious: it

is a simple artifice destined to break off habits

and to scatter illusions by changing the points

of view. Once set free, once again become

capable of direct and simple view, what we

accept as fact is what bears no trace of syn

thetic elaboration. It is true that here a last

objection presents itself: how shall we think

this limit, purely given, to any degree at all

in fact, if it must precede all language?

The answer is easy. Why speak thus of

limit? This word has two senses: at one

time it designates a last term in a series of

approximations, and at another a certain

internal character of convergence, a certain

quality of progression.

Now, it is the second sense only which suits

the case before us. Immediacy contains no

matter statically defined, and no thing. The

notion of fact is quite relative. What is

fact in one case may become construction

in another. For example, the percepts of



IMMEDIACY 155

common experience are facts for the physicist,

and constructions for the philosopher; thesame applies to a table of numerical results,

for the scholar who is trying to establish a

theory, or for the observer and the psycholo

gist. We may then conceive a series in which

each term is fact in relation to those which

follow it, and constructed in relation to those

which precede it. The expression"

primitive

fact"

then determines not so much a final

object as a direction of thought, a movement

of critical retrogression, a

journey

from the

most to the least elaborate, and the"

contact

with pure immediacy"

is only the effort, more

and more prolonged, to convert the elements

of experience into real and profound action.



Ill

THEORY OF PERCEPTION

OF what the work of return to immediacy

consists, and how the intuition which it calls

up reveals absolute fact, we shall see by an

example, if we study more closely a capital

point of Mr. Bergson s philosophy, the theory

of external perception.

If the act of perceiving realizes the lived

communion of the subject and object in the

image, we must admit that here we have the

perfect knowledge which we wish to obtain

always : we resign ourselves to conception only

for want of perception, and our ideal is to

convert all conception into perception. Doubt

less we might define philosophy by this same

ideal, as an effort to expand our perceptive

power until we render it capable of grasping

all the wealth and all the depth of reality at

a single glance. Too true it is that such an

ideal remains inaccessible to us. Something,156



THEORY OF PERCEPTION 157

however, is given us already in aesthetic

intuition. Mr.Bergson

haspointed

it out

in some admirable pages,1

and has explained

to us also how philosophy pursues an an

alogous end.2

But philosophy must be conceived as an art

implying

science and criticism, all

experienceand all reason. It is when we look at meta

physics in this way that they become a positive

order of veritable knowledge. Kant has con

clusively established that what lies beyond

language can only be attained by direct vision,

not by dialectic progress. His mistake was

that he afterwards believed such a vision for

ever impossible; and whence did this mistake

arise, if not from the fact that, for his new

vision, he exacted intuitive faculties quite

different from those at man s disposal. Here

again the artist will be our example and model.

He appeals to no transcendent sense, but de

taches common-sense from its utilitarian prej

udices. Let us do the same: we shall obtain

a similar result without laying ourselves open

to Kant s objections. This work is everywhere

possible, and it is, par excellence, the work of

1

Laughter, pp. 150 ff.

2First lecture on The Perception of Change, delivered at

Oxford, 26th May 1911.




philosophy: let us try then to sketch it in

relation to the perception of matter.

We must distinguish two senses of the word"

perception." This word means first of all

simple apprehension of immediacy, grasp of

primitive fact. When we use it in this sense,

we will agree to say pure perception. It is

perhaps in place to see in it nothing but a

limit which concrete experience never presents

unmixed, a direction of research rather than

the possession of a thing.

However that may be, the first sense is the

fundamental sense, and what it designates

must be at the root of all ordinary perception;

I mean, of every mental operation which re

sults in the construction of a percept: a term

formed by analogy with concept, representing

the result of a complex work of analysis and

synthesis, with judgment from externals. Welive the images in an act of pure perception,

whilst the objects of ordinary perception are,

for example, the bodies of which we speak in

common language.With regard to the relation of the two

senses which we have just distinguished,

common opinion seems very precise. It

might be thus resumed: at the point of

departure we have simple sensations, similar




to qualitative atoms (this is the part of pure

perception) ,

and afterwardstheir

arrangementinto connected systems, which are percepts.

But criticism does not authorize this manner

of looking at it. Nowhere does knowledge

begin by separate elements. Such elements

are

alwaysa

productof

analysis.

So there

is a problem to solve to regain the basis of

pure perception which is hidden and obscured

by our familiar percepts.

Do not suppose that the solution of this

problem is easy. One method only is any

use; to plunge into reality, to become im

mersed in it, in a long-pursued effort to

assimilate all the records of common-sense

and positive science."

For we do not obtain

an intuition of reality, that is to say, an intel

lectual sympathy with its inmost content,

unless we have gained its confidence by long

companionship with its superficial manifesta

tions. And it is not a question merely of

assimilating the leading facts; we must

accumulate and melt them down into such

an enormous mass that we are sure, in this

fusion, of neutralizing in one another all the

preconceived and premature ideas which

observers may have unconsciously allowed

to form the sediment of their observations.




Thus, and only thus, is crude materiality to

be disengaged from known facts."

A directing principle controls this work and

reintroduces order and convergence, after

dispensing with them at the outset; viz.

that, contrary to common opinion, percep

tion as practised in the course of daily life,

"

natural"

perception does not aim at a goal

of disinterested knowledge, but one of prac

tical utility, or rather, if it is knowledge, it is

only knowledge elaborated in view of action

andspeech.

Need we repeat here the proofs by which

we have already established in the most

positive manner that such is really the mean

ing of ordinary perception, the underlying

reason which causes it to take theplace

of

pure perception? We perceive by habit

only what is useful to us, what interests us

practically; very often, too, we think we

are perceiving when we are merely inferring,

as for example when we seem to see adis-

1Introduction to Metaphysics in the Metaphysical and Moral

Review, January 1903. For the correct interpretation of this

passage ("intellectual sympathy ")

it must not be forgotten

that before Creative Evolution, Mr. Bergson employed the

word "

intelligence"

in a wider acceptation, more akin to that

commonly received.

I




tance in depth, a succession of planes, of

which in

reality

wejudge by

differences

of coloring or relief.

Our senses supplement one another. Aslow education has gradually taught us to

co-ordinate their impressions, especially those

of touch to those of vision.1

Theoretical forms come between nature and

us: a veil of symbols envelops reality; thus,

finally, we no longer see things themselves,

we are content to read the labels on them.

Moreover,our

perception appearsto

analysis

completely saturated with memories, and that

in view of our practical insertion in the pres

ent. I will not come back to this point which

has been so lucidly explained by Mr. Berg-

son in a lecture on Dream

2

and anarticle on

Intellectual Effort? the reading of which can

not be too strongly recommended as an intro

duction to the first chapter of Matter and

Memory, in which further arguments are to

be found. I will only add one remark,fol-

1 H. Bergson, Note on the Psychological Origins of Our

Belief in the Law of Causality. Vol. i. of the Library of the

International Philosophical Congress, 1900.

2

Report of the International Psychological Institute, May1901.

*

Philosophical Review, January 1902.




lowing Mr. Bergson, as always: perception

is not simply contemplation, but consciousness

of an original visual emotion combined with a

complete group of actions in embryo, ges

tures in outline, and the graze of movement

within, by which we prepare to grasp the

object, describe its lines, test its functions,

sound it, move it, and handle it in a thou

sand ways.1

From the preceding observations springs

the utilitarian and practical nature of common

perception. Let us attempt now to see of

what the elaboration which it makes reality

undergo consists. This time I am summing

up the fourth chapter of Matter and Memory.

First of all, we choose between the images,

emphasizing the strong, extinguishing the

weak, although both have, a priori, the sameinterest for pure knowledge; we make this

choice above all by according preference to

impressions of touch, which are the most use

ful from the practical point of view. This

selection determines the parceling up of matter into independent bodies, and the artificial

character of our proceeding is thus made plain.

Does not science, indeed, conclude in the same

1 This is attested by the facts of apraxia or psychic blind

ness. Cf. Matter and Memory, chap. ii.




way, showing us as soon as she frees herself

even to a small extent from common-sense

full continuity re-established by"

moving

strata," and all bodies resolved into station

ary waves and knots of intersecting fluxes?

Already, then, we shall be nearer pure per

ception if we cease to consider anything but

the perceptible stuff in which numerically dis

tinct percepts are cut. Even there, however,

a utilitarian division continues. Our senses

are instruments of abstraction, each of them

discerning a possible path of action. We

may say that corporal life functions in the

manner of an absorbing milieu, which deter

mines the disconnected scale of simple quali

ties by extinguishing most of the perceptible

radiations. In short, the scale of sensations,

with its numerical aspect, is nothing but the

spectrum of our practical activity. Com

monly we perceive only averages and wholes,

which we contract into distinct"

qualities."

Let us disengage from this rhythm what is

peculiar to ourselves.

Above all, let us strive to disengage our

selves from homogeneous space, this sub

stratum of fixity, this arbitrary scheme of

measurement and division, which, to our

greater advantage, subtends the natural,



164. A NEW PHILOSOPHY

qualitative, and undivided extension of

images.1 And we shall finally have pure per

ception in so far as it is accessible to us.

There is no disputing the absolute value

of this pure perception. The impotence of

speculative reason, as demonstrated by Kant,

is perhaps, at bottom, only the impotence of

an intelligence in bondage to certain neces

sities of the corporal life, and exercised upona matter which it has had to disorganize for

the satisfaction of our needs. Our knowledge

of things is then no longer relative to the

fundamental structure of our mind, but

only to its superficial and acquired habits,

to the contingent form which it takes on

from our corporal functions and our lower

needs.

The relativity of knowledge is therefore notfinal. In unmaking what our needs have

made we re-establish intuition in its original

purity, and resume contact with reality.2

That is how things are really presented.

Herewe

are confrontedby

themoving

con-

1 We usually represent homogeneous space as previous to

the heterogeneous extension of images: as a kind of empty

room which we furnish with percepts. We must reverse this

order, and conceive, on the contrary, that extension precedes

space.2 Matter and

Memory, p.

241.




tinuity of images. Pure perception is com

plete perception. Fromit

we pass to ordi

nary perception by diminution, throwing

shadows here and there: the reality perceived

by common-sense is nothing else actually than

universal interaction rendered visible by its

very interruption

at certain

points.Whence we have this double conclusion

already formulated higher up: the relation of

perception to matter is that of the part to the

whole, and our consciousness is rather limited

than relative. It must be stated that primarily

we perceive things in themselves, not in us;

the subjectivity of our current perception

comes from our wrork of outlining it in the

bosom of reality, but the root of pure per

ception plunges into full objectivity. If, at

each point of matter, we were to succeed in

possessing the stream of total interaction of

which it marks a wave, and if we were to

succeed in seeing the multiplicity of these

points as a qualitative heterogeneous flux

without number or severance, we should coin

cide with reality itself. It is true that such

an ideal, while inaccessible on the one hand,

would not succeed on the other without risk

to knowledge ; in fact, says Mr. Bergson,1 "

to

1 Matter and Memory, p. 46.




perceive all the influences of all the points of

all bodies would be to descend to the state of

material object."

But a solution of this double difficulty

remains possible, a dynamic and approximate

solution, which consists in looking for the

absolute intuition of matter in such a mobili

zation of our perspective faculties that webecome capable of following, according to

the circumstances, all the paths of virtual

perception of which the common anxiety for

the practical has made us choose one only,

and capable of realizing all the infinitely dif

ferent modes of qualification and discernment.

But we have still to see how this"

com

plete experience"

can be practically thought.



IV

CRITIQUE OF LANGUAGE

THE perception of reality does not obtain the

full value of knowledge, except when once

socialized, once made the common property

of men, and thereby also tested and verified.

There is one means only of doing that;

viz. to analyze it into manageable and portable

concepts. By language I mean the product

of this conceptualization. Thus language is

necessary; for we must always speak, were it

only to utter the impotence of words. Not

less necessary is a critique of spontaneous

language, of the laws which govern it, of the

postulates which it embraces, of the methods

which convey its implicit doctrines. Synthetic

forms are actually theories already ; they effect

an adaptation of reality to the demands of

practical use. If it is impossible to escape

them, it is at least fitting not to employ them

except with due knowledge, and when prop-167




erly warned against the illusion of the false

problems which they might arouse.

Let us first of all consider thought in itself,

in its concrete life. What are the principal

characteristics, the essential steps? We read

ily say, analysis and synthesis.

Nothing can be known except in contrast,

correlation, or negation of another thing; and

the act of knowledge, considered in itself, is

unification. Thus number appears as a fun

damental category, as an absolute condition

of intelligibility; some go so far as to regard

atomism as a necessary method. But that is

inexact. No doubt the use of number and

the resulting atomism are imposed by defini

tion, we might say, on the thought which

proceeds by conceptual analysis, and then by

unifying construction; that is to say, on syn

thetic thought. But, in greater depth, thought

is dynamic continuity and duration. Its

essential work does not consist in discerning

and afterwards in assembling ready-made

elements. Let us see in it rather a kind of

creative maturation, and let us attempt to

grasp the nature of this causal activity.1

The act of thought is always a complex play

1 H. Bergson, Intellectual Effort in the Philosophical Re

view, January 1902.



CRITIQUE OF LANGUAGE 169

of moving representations, an evolution of

life in which incessant inner reactions occur.That is to say, it is movement. But there

are several planes of thought, from intuition

to language, and we must distinguish between

the thought which moves on the surface

amongterms

displayedon a

single plane, andthe thought which goes deeper and deeper

from one plane to another.

We do not think solely by concepts or

images ; we think, first of all, according to Mr.

Bergsons

expression, by dynamicschemes.

What is a dynamic scheme? It is motive

rather than representative, inexpressible in

itself, but a source of language containing not

so much the images or concepts in which it

will develop as the indication of the path to

be followed in order to obtain them. It is not

so much system as movement, progress, gen

esis; it does not mark the gaze directed upon

the various points of one plane of deliberate

contemplation so much as an effort to pass

through successive planes of thought in a

direction leading from intuition to analysis.

We might define it by its function of calling

up images and concepts, representations

which, for one and the same scheme, are

neither strictly determined nor anything in




particular in themselves, concurrent rep

resentations which have in common one and

the same logical power.

The representations called up form a body

to the scheme, and the relation of the scheme

to the concepts and images which it calls

up resembles, mutatis mutandis, the relation

pointed out by Mr. Bergson between an idea

and its basis in the brain. In short, it is

the very act of creative thought which the

dynamic scheme interprets, the act not yet

fixed in"

results."

Nothing is easier than to illustrate the ex

istence of this scheme. Let us merely remark

a few facts of current observation. Recall, for

example, the suggestive anxiety we experience

when we seek to remember a name; the

precise syllables of the name still escape us,

but we feel them approaching, and already we

possess something of them, since we imme

diately reject those which do not answer to a

certain direction of expectancy; and by en

deavoring to secure a more intimate feeling

of this direction we suddenly arouse the de

sired recollection.

In the same way, what does it mean to have

the sense of a complex situation in active life,

if not that we perceive it, not as a static group




of explicit details, but as a meeting of powers

allied or hostile, convergent or divergent,directed towards this or that, of which the

aggregate whole tends of itself to awaken in

us the initial reactions which analyze it?

In the same way again, how do we learn,

how can we assimilate a vast system of concepts or images? Our task is not to con

centrate an enumerative attention on each

individual factor; we should never get awayfrom them, the weight would be too heavy.

What we entrust to

memoryis

reallya

dynamic scheme permitting us to"

regain"

what we should not have succeeded in"

re

taining." In reality our only"

knowledge"

is through such a scheme, which contains in

the state of potential implication an inex

haustible multiplicity ready to be developed

in actual representations.

How, finally, is any discovery made ? Find

ing is solving a problem; and to solve a

problem we must always begin by supposing

it solved. But of what does such a hypothesis

consist?

It is not an anticipated view of the solution,

for then all would be at an end; nor is it a

simple formula putting in the present indic

ative what the enunciation expressed in the




future or the imperative, for then nothing

would bebegun.

It is

exactlya

dynamicscheme; that is to say, a method in the state

of directed tension; and often, the discovery

once realized as theory or system, capable of

unending developments and resurrections, re

mainsby

the best of itself a method and a

dynamic scheme.

But one last example will perhaps reveal the

truth still more."

Anyone who has attempted

literary composition knows well that when the

subject has been long studied, all the docu

ments collected, all the notes taken, we need,

to embark on the actual work of composition,

something more, an effort, often very painful,

to place oneself suddenly in the very heart of

the subject, and to seek as deep down as

possible an impulse to which afterwards we

shall only have to let ourselves go. This

impulse, once received, projects the mind on a

road where it finds both the information which

it had collected and a thousand other details

as well; it develops and analyzes itself in

terms, the enumeration of which would have

no end; the further we advance, the more we

discover; we shall never succeed in saying

everything; and yet, if we turn sharply round

towards the impulse we feel behind ourselves,




to grasp it, it escapes; for it was not a thing

but a direction of movement, and though in

definitely extensible it is simplicity itself."

x

The thought, then, which proceeds from one

representation to another in one and the same

plane is one kind ; that which follows one and

the same conceptual direction through descend

ing planes is another. Creative and fertile

thought is the thought which adopts the second

kind of work. The ideal is a continual oscilla

tion from one plane to the other, a restless

alternative of intuitive concentration and conceptual expansion. But our idleness takes ex

ception to this, for the feeling of effort appears

precisely in the traject from the dynamic

scheme to the images and concepts, in the

passingfrom one

planeof

thoughtto another.

Thus the natural tendency is to remain in

the last of these planes, that of language.

We know what dangers threaten us there.

Suppose we have some idea or other and the

word representing it. Do not suppose that to

this word there is one corresponding sense

only, nor even a finished group of various

distinct and rigorously separable senses. On

1 H. Bergson, Metaphysical and Moral Review, January

1903. The wholecritique

oflanguage

is

implicitly

contained

in this Introduction to Metaphysics.




the contrary, there is a whole scale correspond

ing, a complete continuous spectrum of unstable meanings which tend unceasingly to

resolve into one another. Dictionaries attempt

to illuminate them. The task is impossible.

They co-ordinate a few guiding marks; but

who shall say what infinite transitions underlie them?

A word designates rather a current of

thought than one or several halts on a logical

path. Here again a dynamic continuity ex

ists previous to the parceling out of the ac

ceptations. What, then, should be the atti

tude of mind?

A supple moving attitude more attentive to

the curve of change than to the possible halt

ing-points alongthe road.

Butthis is not the

case at all; the effort would be too great, and

what happens, on the contrary, is this. For

the spectrum a chromatic scale of uniform tints

is very quickly substituted. This is in itself

an undesirablesimplification,

for it is

impossible to reconstitute the infinity of real shades

by combinations of fundamental colors each

representing the homogeneous shore, which

each region of the spectrum finally becomes.

However cleverly we proportion these aver

ages we get, at most, some vulgar counterfeit:




orange, for example, is not a mixture of yel

low and red, although this mixture may recallto those who have known it elsewhere the

simple and original sensation of orange.

Again, a second simplification, still more un

desirable, succeeds the first.

There are nolonger any

colors atall;

black lines serve as guidemarks. We are

therefore with pure concepts decidedly in full

symbolism. And it is with symbols that we

shall henceforward be trying to reconstruct

reality.

I need not go back to the general character

istics or the inconveniences of this method.

Concepts resemble photographic views; con

crete thickness escapes them. However

exact, varied, or numerous we suppose them,

they can certainly recall their object, but not

reveal it to anyone who had not had any

direct intuition of it. Nothing is easier than

to trace the plan of a body in four dimensions ;

all the same, this drawing does not admit"

visualization in space"

as is the case with

ordinary bodies, for want of a previous intui

tion which it would awaken: thus it is with

concepts in relation to reality. Like photo

graphs and like plans, they are extracted from

reality, but we are not able to say that they




were contained in it; and many of them be

sides are not so much as extracts; they are

simple systematized notes, in fact, notes made

upon notes. In other terms, concepts do not

represent pieces, parts, or elements of reality.

Literally they are nothing but simple symbolic

notations. To wish to make integral factors

of them would be as strange an illusion as that

of seeing in the co-ordinates of a geometric

point the constitutive essence of that point.

We do not make things with symbols, any

more than we should reconstruct a picture

with the qualifications which classify it.

Whence, then, comes the natural inclination

of thought towards the concept? From the

fact that thought delights in artifices which

facilitate analysis and language.

The first of these artifices is that from

which results the possibility of decomposition

or recomposition according to arbitrary laws.

For that we need a previous substitution of

symbols for things. Nothing demonstrates

this better than the celebrated argumentswhich we owe to Zeno of Elea. Mr. Bergson

returns to the discussion of them over and

over again.1

1

Essay on the Immediate Data, pp. 112-115; Matter and

Memory, pp. 250-253; Creative Evolution, pp. 308-313.




The nerve of the reasoning there consists in

the evident absurdity there would be in con

ceiving an inexhaustible exhausted, an un

achievable achieved; in short, a total actually

completed, and yet obtained by the successive

addition of an infinite number of terms.

But the question is to know whether a move

ment can be considered as a numerical multi

plicity. Virtual divisibility there is, no doubt,

but not actual division; divisibility is indefi

nite, whereas an actual division, if it respects

the inner articulations of reality, is bound

to halt at a limited number of phases.

What we divide and measure is the track

of the movement once accomplished, not the

movement itself: it is the trajectory, not the

traject. In the trajectory we can count end

less positions; that is to say, possible halts.

Let us not suppose that the moving body

meets these elements all ready-marked.

Hence what the Eleatic dialectic illustrates

is a case of incommensurability; the radical

inability of analysis to end a certain task; our

powerlessness to explain the fact of the

transit, if we apply to it such and such modes

of numerical decomposition or recomposition,

which are valid only for space; the impossi

bility of conceiving becoming as susceptible




of being cut up into arbitrary segments, and

afterwards reconstructed by summing of

terms according to some law or other; in

short, it is the nature of movement, which is

without division, number, or concept.

But thought delights in analyses regulated

by the sole consideration of easy language;

hence its tendency to an arithmetic and

geometry of concepts, in spite of the dis

astrous consequences; and thus the Eleatic

paradox is no less instructive in its specious

character than in the solution which it

embodies.

At bottom, natural thought, I mean thought

which abandons itself to its double inclination

of synthetic idleness and useful industry, is a

thought haunted by anxieties of the operating

manual, anxieties of fabrication.

What does it care about the fluxes of reality

and dynamic depths? It is only interested in

the outcrops scattered here and there over the

firm soil of the practical, and it solidifies

"

terms"

like stakes plunged in a moving

ground. Hence comes the configuration of

its spontaneous logic to a geometry of solids,

and hence come concepts, the instantaneous

moments taken in transitions.

Scientific thought, again, preserves the same




habits and the same preferences. It seeks

only what repeats, what can be counted.Everywhere, when it theorizes, it tends to

establish static relations between composing

unities which form a homogeneous and dis

connected multiplicity.

Its

veryinstruments bias it in that direction.

The apparatus of the laboratory really grasps

nothing but arrangement and coincidence; in

a word, states not transitions. Even in cases

of contrary appearance, for example, when

we determine a weight by observing the oscil

lation of a balance and not its rest, we are

interested in regular recurrence, in a sym

metry, in something therefore which is of the

nature of an equilibrium and a fixity all the

same. The reason of it is that science, like

common-sense, although in a manner a little

different, aims only in actual fact at obtain

ing finished and workable results.

Let us imagine reality under the figure of

a curve, a rhythmic succession of phases of

which our concepts mark so many tangents.

There is contact at one point, but at one

point only. Thus our logic is valid as infini

tesimal analysis, just as the geometry of the

straight line allows us to define each state of

curve. It is thus, for example, that vitality




maintains a relation of momentary tangency

to the

physico-chemical

structure. If we

study this relation and analogous relations,

this fact remains indisputably legitimate.

Let us not think, however, that such a study,

even when repeated in as many points as we

wish, can ever suffice.

We must afterwards by genuine integra

tion attain moving continuity. That is ex

actly the task represented by the return to

intuition, with its proper instrument, the

dynamic scheme. From this tangential point

of view we try to grasp the genesis of the

curve as envelope, or rather, and better still,

the birth of successive tangents as instanta

neous directions. Speaking non-metaphori-

cally, we cling to genetic methods of concep

tualization and proceed from the generating

principle to its conceptual derivatives.

But our thought finds it very difficult to

sustain such an effort long. It is partial to

rectilineal deduction, actual becoming horrifies

it. It desires immediately to find"

things"

sharply determined and very clear. That is

why immediately a tangent is constructed, it

follows its movement in a straight line to

infinity. Thus are produced limit-concepts,

the ultimate terms, the atoms of language.




As a rule they go in pairs, in antithetic

couples, every analysis being dichotomy, since

the discernment of one path of abstraction

determines in contrast, as a complementary

remainder, the opposite path of direction.

Hence, according to the selection effected

among concepts, andthe relative

weight whichis attributed to them, we get the antinomies

between which a philosophy of analysis must

forever remain oscillating and torn in sunder.

Hence comes the parceling up of metaphysics

into

systems,and its

appearance

of

regulatedplay

"

between antagonistic schools which get

up on the stage together, each to win ap

plause in turn."

The method followed to find a genuine

solution must be inverse; not dialectic com

bination of pre-existing concepts, but, setting

out from a direct and really lived intuition, a

descent to ever new concepts along dynamic

schemes which remain open. From the same

intuition spring many concepts: "As the

wind which rushes into the crossroads divides

into diverging currents of air, which are all

only one and the samegust."

1 H. Bergson, Report of the French Philosophical Society,

meeting, 2nd May 1901.





The antinomies are resolved genetically,

whilst in the plane of language they remain

irreducible. With a heterogeneity of shades,

when we mix the tints and neutralize them

by one another, we easily create homogeneity ;

but take the result of this work, that is to say,

the average final color, and it will be impos

sible to reconstitute the wealth of the original.

Do you desire a precise example of the

work we must accomplish? Take that of

change;1

no other is more significant or

clearer. It shows us two necessary move

ments in the reform of our habits of imagina

tion or conception.

Let us try first of all to familiarize our

selves with the images which show us the

fixity deriving from becoming.

Two colliding waves, two rollers meeting,

typify rest by extinction and interference.

With the movement of a stone, and the

fluidity of running water, we form the in

stantaneous position of a ricochet. The very

movement of the stone, seen in the successive

positions of the tangent to the trajectory, is

stationary to our view.

What is dynamic stability, except non-

1

Of. two lectures delivered by Mr. Bergson at Oxford on

The Perception of Change, 26th and 27th May 1911.




variation arising from variation itself? Equi

librium is produced from speed. A manrunning solidifies the moving ground. In

short, two moving bodies regulated by each

other become fixed in relation to each other.

After this, let us try to perceive change in

itself, and then represent it to ourselves ac

cording to its specific and original nature.

The common conception needs reform on

two principal points:

(1) LA11 change is revealed in the light _of

immediate intuition, not as a numerical series

.of states, but a rhythm of phases, each of

which constitutes an indivisible act, in such a

way that each change has its natural inner

articulations, forbidding us to break it up

accordingto

arbitrary laws,like a homo

geneous length.

(2) Change is self-sufficient ; it has no need

^oi a support, a moving body, a"

thing"

in

motion. Thqre is no vehicle, no substance, no

spatial receptacle, resembling a theater-scene,

no material dummy successively draped in

colored stuffs; on the contrary, it is the\

body or the atom which should be subor- 1

dinately defined as symbols of completed/

becoming.

Of movement thus conceived, indivisible and



184* A NEW PHILOSOPHY

substantial, what better image can we have

than a musicalevolution,

aphrase

in

melody?That is how we must work to conceive reality.

If such a conception at first appears obscure,

let us credit experience, for ideas are grad

ually illuminated by the very use we make of

them,

"

theclarity

of aconcept being hardly

anything, at bottom, but the assurance once

obtained that we can handle itprofitably."

*

If we require to reach a conception of this

kind with regard to change, the Eleatic

dialectic is there to establish it

beyond

dis

pute, and positive science comes to the same

conclusion, since it shows us everywhere

nothing but movements placed upon move

ments, never fixed"

things," except as tem

porary symbols of what we leave at a given

moment outside the field of study.

In any case, the difficulty of such a con

ception need not stop us; it is little more

than a difficulty of the imaginative order.

And as for the conception itself, or rather

the corresponding intuition, it will share the

fate of all its predecessors: to our contem

poraries it will be a scandal, a century later a

stroke of genius, after some centuries com

mon evidence, and finally an instinctive axiom.

1 H. Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics.



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. DURATION AND LIB

ERTY

ARMED with the method we have just de

scribed Mr.Bergson

turned first of all to

ward the problem of the ego: taking up his

position in the center of mind, he has at

tempted to establish its independent reality

by examining its profound nature.

The first chapter of the Essay on the

Immediate Data contains a decisive criticism

of the conceptions which claim to introduce

number and measure into the domain of the

facts of consciousness.

Not that it is our business to reject as false

the notion of psychological intensity; but this

notion demands interpretation, and the least

that we can say against the attempt to turn

it into a notion of size is that in doing so we

are misunderstanding the specific character of

the object studied. The same reproach must

185




be levelled against association of ideas, the

system of mechanical psychologyof

which the

type is presented us by Taine and Stuart Mill.

Already in chaps, ii. and iii. of the Essay,

and again all through Matter and Memory,the system is riddled with objections, each of

which would be sufficient to show its radical

flaw. All the aspects, all the phenomena of

mental life come up for successive review. In

respect of each of them we have an illustration

of the insufficiency of the atomism which

seeks to

recomposethe soul with fixed

elements, by a massing of units exterior to

one another, everywhere and always the same :

this is a grammatical philosophy which believes

reality to be composed of parts which admit

of number just as

language

is made of words

placed side by side; it is a materialist

philosophy which improperly transfers the

proceedings of the physical sciences to the

sciences of the inner life.

On the contrary, we must represent the

state of consciousness to ourselves as variable

according to the whole of which it forms a

part. Here and there, although it always

bears the same name, it is no longer the same

thing."

The more the ego becomes itself

again, the more also do its states of con-



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 187

sciousness, instead of being in juxtaposition,

penetrate one another, blend with one an

other, and tinge one another with the coloring

of all the rest. Thus each of us has his manner of loving or hating, and this love or hate

reflects our entirepersonality."

*

At bottom Mr. Bergson is bringing for

ward the necessity, in the case before us, of

substituting a new notion of continuous

qualitative heterogeneity for the old notion

of numerical and spatial continuity. Above

all, heis

emphasizing the still more imperiousnecessity of regarding each state as a phase in

duration; and we are here touching on his

principal and leading intuition, the intuition

of real duration.

Historicallythis was Mr.

Bergsons

starting-point and the origin of his thought : a criticism

of time under the form in which common-

sense imagines it, in which science employs it.

He was the first to notice the fact that

scientific time has no"

duration." Our

equations really express only static relations

between simultaneous phenomena; even the

differential quotients they may contain in

reality mark nothing but present tendencies;

no change would take place in our calculations

1





if the time were given in advance, instan

taneously fulfilled,like

alinear

whole of pointsin numerical order, with no more genuine

duration than that contained in the numerical

succession. Even in astronomy there is less

anticipation than judgment of constancy and

stability,the

phenomena beingalmost

strictly

periodic, while the hazard of prediction bears

only upon the minute divergence between the

actual phenomenon and the exact period

attributed to it. Notice under what figure

common-senseimagines

time: as an inert

receptacle, a homogeneous milieu, neutral

and indifferent; in fact, a kind of space.

The scholar makes use of a like image; for

he defines time by its measurement, and all

measurement implies interpretation in space.

For the scholar the hour is not an interval,

but a coincidence, an instantaneous arrange

ment, and time is resolved into a dust of

fixities, as in those pneumatic clocks in which

the hand moves forward in jerks, marking

nothing but a sequence of pauses.

Such symbols are sufficient, at least for a

first approximation, when it is only a question

of matter, the mechanism of which, strictly

considered, contains nothing"

durable." But

in biology and psychology quite different char-




acteristics become essential; age and memory,

heterogeneity of musical phases, irreversible

rhythm"

which cannot be lengthened or

shortened at will."

1

Then it is that the return of time becomes

necessary to duration. How are we to de

scribe this duration? It is a melodious evolu

tion of moments, each of which contains the

resonance of those preceding and announces

the one which is going to follow ; it is a process

of enriching which never ceases, and a per

petual appearance of novelty ; it is an indivisi

ble, qualitative, and organic becoming, foreign

to space, refractory to number.

Summon the image of a stream of con

sciousness passing through the continuity of

the spectrum, and becoming tinged succes

sively with each of its shades. Or rather

imagine a symphony having feeling of itself,

and creating itself; that is how we should

conceive duration.

That duration thus conceived is

really

the

basis of ourselves Mr. Bergson proves by a

thousand examples, and by a marvelous em

ployment of the introspective method which

he has helped to make so popular. Wecannot quote these admirable analyses here.





A single one will serve as model, specially

selected asreferring

to one of the most

ordinary moments of our life, to show plainly

that the perception of real duration always

accompanies us in secret.

"

At the moment when I write these lines

a clock near me is

striking

the hour; but

mydistracted ear is only aware of it after several

strokes have already sounded; that is, I have

not counted them. And yet an effort of

introspective attention enables me to total

the four strokes already struck and add them

to those which I hear. If I then withdraw

into myself and carefully question myself

about what has just happened, I become

aware that the first four sounds had struck

my ear and even moved my consciousness,

but that the sensations produced by each of

them, instead of following in juxtaposition,

had blended into one another in such a wayas to endow the whole with a peculiar aspect

and make of it a kind of musical phrase. In

order to estimate in retrospect the number

of strokes which have sounded, I attempted

to reconstitute this phrase in thought: myimagination struck one, then two, then three,

and so long as it had not reached the exact

number four, my sensibility, on being ques-




tioned, replied that the total effect differed in

quality. It had therefore noted the successionof the four strokes in a way of its own, but

quite otherwise than by addition, and without

bringing in the image of a juxtaposition of

distinct terms. In fact, the number of strokes

struck wasperceived

asquality, not

asquan

tity: duration is thus presented to immediate

consciousness, and preserves this form so long

as it does not give place to a symbolical rep

resentation drawn fromspace."

And now are we to believe that return to

the feeling of real duration consists in letting

ourselves go, and allowing ourselves an idle

relaxation in dream or dissolution in sensation,"

as a shepherd dozing watches the water flow"

?

Or are we even to believe, as has been main

tained, that the intuition of duration reduces"

to the spasm of delight of the mollusc basking

in the sun"? This is a complete mistake!

We should fall back into the misconceptions

which I was pointing out in connection with

immediacy in general; we should be forget

ting that there are several rhythms of dura

tion, as there are several kinds of conscious

ness; and finally we should beimisunderstand

ing the character of a creative invention per-

1

Essay on the Immediate Data, pp. 127-128.




petually renewed, which is that of our inner

life.

For it is in duration that we are free, not in

spatialized time, as all determinist conceptions

suppose in contradiction.

I shall not go back to the proofs of this

thesis; they were condensed some way back

after the third chapter of the Essay on the

Immediate Data. But I will borrow from

Mr. Bergson himself a few complementary

explanations, in order, as far as possible, to

forestall any misunderstanding. The word

liberty he says,"

has for me a sense interme

diate between those which we assign as a rule

to the two terms liberty and free-will. On one

hand, I believe that liberty consists in being

entirely oneself, in acting in conformity with

oneself; it is then, to a certain degree, the

moral liberty of philosophers, the independ

ence of the person with regard to everything

other than itself. But that is not quite this

liberty, since the independence I am describing

has not always a moral character. Further, it

does not consist in depending on oneself as an

effect depends on the cause which of necessity

determines it. In this, I should come back to

the sense of free-will. And yet I do not

accept this sense completely either, since free-




will, in the usual meaning of the term, implies

theequal possibility

of twocontraries, and on

my theory we cannot formulate, or even con

ceive in this case the thesis of the equal

possibility of the two contraries, without fall

ing into grave error about the nature of

time. I might say then, that the

object

of

mythesis, on this particular point, has been pre

cisely to find a position intermediate between6

moral liberty and free-will/ Liberty, such

as I understand it, is situated between these

two terms, but not at equal distances from

both. If I were obliged to blend it with one

of the two, I should select free-will." 1

After all, when we place ourselves in the

perspective of homogeneous time; that is to

say, when we substitute for the real and

profound ego its image refracted through

space, the act necessarily appears either as the

resultant of a mechanical composition of

elements, or as an incomprehensible creation

ex nihilo.

"We have supposed that there is a third

course to pursue; that is, to place ourselves

back in pure duration. . . . Then we seemed

to see action arise from its antecedents by an

1

Report of the French Philosophical Society, philosophical

vocabulary, article"

Liberty."




evolution sui generis, in such a way that we

discover in this action the antecedents which

explain it, while at the same time it adds

something absolutely new to them, being an

advance upon them as the fruit upon the

flower. Liberty is in no way reduced thereby,

as has been said, to obvious spontaneity.

At most this would be the case in the

animal world, where the psychological life

is principally that of the affections. But in

the case of man, a thinking being, the free

act can be called a synthesis of feelings and

ideas, and the evolution which leads to it a

reasonable evolution."1

Finally, in a most important letter,2

Mr.

Bergson becomes a little more precise still.

We must certainly not confuse the affirmation

of liberty with the negation of physical de

terminism;"

for there is more in this affirma

tion than in this negation."All the same,

liberty supposes a certain contingence. It is

"

psychological causality itself," which must

not be represented after the model of physical

causality.

In opposition to the latter, it implies that

1 Matter and Memory, p. 243.

2

Report of the French Philosophical Society, meeting, 26th

February 1903.




between two moments of a conscious being

there is not anequivalence admitting of

deduction, that in the transition from one to

the other there is a genuine creation. With

out doubt the free act is not without explana

tory reasons."

But these reasons have determined usonly

at the moment when they have become

determining; that is, at the moment when

the act was virtually accomplished, and the

creation of which I speak is entirely contained

in the progress by which these reasons have

become determining." It is true that all this

implies a certain independence of mental life

in relation to the mechanism of matter; and

that is why Mr. Bergson was obliged to set

himself the problem of the relation between

body and mind.

We know that the solution of this problem

is the principal object of Matter and Memory.

The thesis of psycho-physiological parallelism

is there peremptorily refuted.

The method which Mr. Bergson has fol

lowed to do so will be found set out by him

self in a communication to the French Philo

sophical Society, which it is important to

study as introduction.1

The paralogism in-

1

Report of meeting, 2nd May 1901.




eluded in the very enunciation of the parallel-

ist thesis is

explainedin a memoire

presentedto the Geneva International Philosophical

Congress in 1904.1

But the actual proof is

made by the analysis of the memoire which

fills chaps, ii. and iii. of the work cited above.2

It is there established, by the most positive

arguments,3

that all our past is self-preserved

in us, that this preservation only makes one

with the musical character of duration, with

the indivisible nature of change, but that one

part only is conscious of it, the part concernedwith action, to which present conceptions sup

ply a body of actuality.

What we call our present must be con

ceived neither as a mathematical point nor

as a segment with precise limits: it is the

1 Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, November 1904.

2 An extremely suggestive resume of these theses will be

found in the second lecture on The Perception of Change.8 Instead of brutally connecting the two extremes of matter

and mind, one regarded in its highest action, the other in

its most rudimentary mechanism, thus dooming to certain

failure any attempt to explain their actual union, Mr. Bergson

studies their living contact at the point of intersection marked

by the phenomena of perception and memory: he compares

the higher point of matter the brain and the lower point

of mind certain recollections and it is between these two

neighbouring points that he notes a difference, by a method

no longer dialectic but experimental.




moment of our history brought out by our

attention to life, and nothing, in strict justice, would prevent it from extending to the

whole of this history. It is not recollection

then, but forgetfulness which demands ex

planation.

Accordingto a

dictumof

Ravaisson, ofwhich Mr. Bergson makes use, the explana

tion must be sought in the body: "it is ma

teriality which causes forgetfulness in us."

There are, in fact, several planes of memory,

from"pure

recollection" notyet interpreted

in distinct images down to the same recollec

tion actualized in embryo sensations and

movements begun; and we descend from the

one to the other, from the life of simple"

dream"

to the life of practical"

drama,"

along"

dynamic schemes." The last of these

planes is the body; a simple instrument of

action, a bundle of motive habits, a group of

mechanisms which mind has set up to act.

How does it operate in the work of memory?

The task of the brain is every moment to

thrust back into unconsciousness all that part

of our past which is not at the time useful.

Minute study of facts shows that the brain is

employed in choosing from the past, in dimin

ishing, simplifying, and extracting from it all




that can contribute to present experience; but

it is not concerned topreserve

it. Inshort,

the brain can only explain absences, not

presences. That is why the analysis of

memory illustrates the reality of mind, and

its independence relative to matter. Thus is

determined the relation of soul to

body,the

penetrating point which it inserts and drives

into the plane of action."

Mind borrows

from matter perceptions from which it derives

its nourishment, and gives them back to it

in the form of movement, on which it has

impressed itsliberty."

x

This, then, is how the cycle of research

closes, by returning to the initial problem, the

problem of perception. In the two opposing

systems by which attempts have been made

to solve it, Mr. Bergson discovers a common

postulate, resulting in a common impotence.

From the idealistic point of view we do not

succeed in explaining how a world is expressed

externally, nor from the realistic point of view

how an ego is expressed internally. And this

double failure comes again from the under

lying hypothesis, according to which the dual

ity of the subject and object is conceived as

primitive, radical, and static. Our duty is

1Matter and Memory, p. 332,




diametrically opposed. We have to consider

this duality as gradually elaborated, and the

problem concerning it must be first stated

and then solved as a function of time rather

than of space. Our representation begins by

being impersonal, and it is only later that

it

adoptsour

bodyas center.

We emergegradually from universal reality, and our real

izing roots are always sunk in it. But this

reality in itself is already consciousness, and

the first moment of perception always puts us

back into the initial state

previous

to the

separation of the subject and object. It is by

the work of life, and by action, that this sep

aration is effected, created, accentuated, and

fixed. And the common mistake of realism

and idealism is to believe it effected in advance,

whereas it is relatively second to perception.

Hence comes the absolute value of imme

diate intuition. For from what source could

an irreducible relativity be produced in it?

It would be absurd to make it depend on the

constitution of our brain, since our brain it

self, so far as it is a group of images, is only

a part of the universe, presenting the same

characteristics as the whole; and in so far as

it is a group of mechanisms become habits, is

only a result of the initial action of life, of




original perceptive discernment. And, on the

other hand, no less absurd would be the fearthat the subject can ever be excluded or elimi

nated from its own knowledge, since, in real

ity, the subject, like the object, is in percep

tion, not perception in the subject at least

not primitively. So that itis

by a trick of

speech that the theses of fundamental rela

tivity take root: they vanish when we return

to immediacy; that is to say, when we present

problems as they ought to be presented, in

terms which do notsuppose any conceptual

analysis yet accomplished.



VI

THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION:LIFE AND MATTER

AFTER the problem of consciousness Mr.

Bergsonwas bound to

approachthat of

evolution, for psychological liberty is only

truly conceivable if it begins in some meas

ure with the first pulsation of corporal life.

"

Either sensation has no raison d etre or it is

a beginning of liberty ";that is what the Es-

say on the Immediate Datal

already told us.

It was easy then to foresee the necessity

of a general theoretical frame in which our

duration might take a position which would

render it more intelligible by removing its

appearance of singular exception.

Thus in 1901, I wrote2

with regard to the

new philosophy considered as a philosophy of

becoming:"

It has been prepared by contem-

1

Page 25.

2 Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, May 1901.

201



A NEW PHILOSOPHY

porary evolution, which it investigates and

perfects, sifting it from its ore of materialism,and turning it into genuine metaphysics. Is

not this the philosophy suited to the century

of history? Perhaps it indicates that a period

has arrived in which mathematics, losing its

role asthe regulating science,

is

about to giveplace to biology." This is the programcarried out, in what an original manner we

are well aware, by the doctrine of Creative

Evolution.

When we examine ancientknowledge,

one

characteristic of it is at once visible. It

studies little but certain privileged moments

of changing reality, certain stable forms,

certain states of equilibrium. Ancient geom

etry,

for

example,is almost

alwayslimited

to the static consideration of figures already

traced. Modern science is quite different.

Has not the greatest progress which it has

realized in the mathematical order really been

the invention of infinitesimal analysis; that is

to say, an effort to substitute the process for

the resultant, to follow the moving generation

of phenomena and magnitudes in its conti

nuity, to place oneself along becoming at any

moment whatsoever, or rather, by degrees at

all successive moments? This fundamental



THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 203

tendency, coupled with the development of

biologicalresearch, was bound to incline it

towards a doctrine of evolution; and hence

the success of Spencer.

But time, which is everywhere in modern

science the chief variable, is only a time-length,

indefinitely and arbitrarily divisible. There is

no genuine duration, nothing really tending

to evolution in Spencer s evolution: no more

than there is in the periodic working of a

turbine or in the stationary tremble of a

diapason. Is not this what is emphasized

by the perpetual employment of mechanical

images and vulgar engineering metaphors,

the least fault of which is to suppose a homo

geneous time, and a motionless theater of

change which is at bottom only space?"

In

such a doctrine we still talk of time, we pro

nounce the word, but we hardly think of the

thing; for time is here robbed of all effect."

Whence comes a latent materialism, ready

to grasp the chance of self-expression.

Whence the automatic return to the dreamof universal arithmetic, which Laplace, Du

Bois-Reymond, and Huxley have expressed

with such precision.2


8 Ibid., p. 38,




In order to escape such consequences we

must, with Mr. Bergson, reintroduce real duration, that is to say, creative duration into

evolution; we must conceive life according to

the mode exhibited with regard to change in

general. And it is science itself which calls us

to this task. What does science actually tell

us when we let it speak instead of prescribing

to it answers which conform to our prefer

ences? Vitality, at every point of its becom

ing, is a tangent to physico-chemical mecha

nism. But physico-chemistry does not revealits secret any more than the straight line pro

duces the curve.

Consider the development of an embryo.

It summarizes the history of species; onto

genesis,we are

told, reproduces phylogenesis.And what do we observe then?

Now that a long sequence of centuries is

contracted for us into a short period, and that

our view is thus capable of a synthesis which

before was too difficult, we see

appearing

the

rhythmic organization, the musical character,

which the slowness of the transitions at first

prevented us from seeing. In each state of

the embryo there is something besides an

instantaneous structure, something besides a

conservative play of actions and reactions;




there is a tendency, a direction, an effort,

a~ creative activity. The stage traversed is

less interesting than the traversing itself; this

again is an act of generating impulse, rather

than an effect of mechanical inertia. So must

the case be, by analogy, with general evolu

tion.

Wehave

there,as it

were,a

vision ofbiological duration in miniature; expansion

and relaxation of its tension bring its homo

geneity to notice, but at the same time,

properly speaking, evolution disappears.

And further, Mr.Bergson

establishes

bydirect and positive arguments that life is

genuine creation. A similar conclusion is

presented as the envelope of his whole

doctrine.

It is imposed first of all by immediate

evidence, for we cannot deny that the history

of life is revealed to us under the aspect of a

progress and an ascent. And this impulse

implies initiative and choice, constituting an

effort which we are not authorized by the

facts to pronounce fatalistic: "A simple glance

at the fossil species shows us that life could

have done without evolution, or could have

evolved only within very restricted limits, had

it chosen the far easier path open to it of

becoming cramped in its primitive forms;




certain Foraminifera have not varied since

the silurian period; the Lingulse, looking

unmoved upon the innumerable revolutions

which have upheaved our planet, are to-day

what they were in the most distant times

of the palaeozoic era." Moreover, if, in us,

life is indisputably creation and liberty, howwould it not, to some extent, be so in

universal nature? Whatever be the in

most essence of what is and what is being

made, we are of it:2

a conclusion by analogy

is therefore legitimate. But, above all, this

conclusion is verified by its aptitude for

solving problems of detail, and for taking

account of observed facts; and in this respect

I regret that I can only refer the reader to

the whole body of admirable discussions andanalyses drawn up by Mr. Bergson with re

gard to"

the plant and the animal," or"

the

development of animal life."

3

As regards matter, two main laws stand out

from the whole of our science, relative to its

nature and its phenomena : a law of conserva

tion and a law of degradation. On the one

hand, we have mechanism, repetition, inertia,


* Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, November 1911.

*Creative Evolution, chap. ii.




constants, and invariants: the play of the

material world, from the

pointof view of

quantity, offers us the aspect of an immense

transformation without gain or loss, a homo

geneous transformation tending to maintain in

itself an exact equivalence between the de

parture and arrival point. On the other hand,

from the point of view of quality, we have

something which is being used up, lowered,

degraded, exhausted: energy expended, move

ment dissipated, constructions breaking up,

weights falling, levels becoming equalized, and

differences effaced. The travel of the material world appears then as a loss, a move

ment of fall and descent.

In addition, there is only a tendency to

conservation, a tendency which is never realized

except imperfectly; while, on the contrary,

we notice that the failure of the vital impulse

is most infallibly interpreted by the appearance

of mechanism. Reality falling asleep or break

ing up is the figure under which we finally

observe matter: matter then is secondary.

Finally, according to Mr. Bergson, matter is

defined as a kind of descent; this descent as

the interruption of an ascent; this ascent it

self as growth; and thus a principle of crea

tion is at the base of things.




Such a view seems obscure and disturbing

to the mathematical understanding. It cannot accustom itself to the idea of a becoming

which is more than a simple change of distri

bution, and more than a simple expression of

latent wealth. When confronted with such

an idea, it always harks back to its eternal

question: How has something come out of

nothing? The question is false; for the idea

of nothing is only a pseudo-idea. Nothing is

unthinkable, since to think nothing is neces

sarily to think or not to think something; andaccording to Mr. Bergson s formula,

1 "

the

representation of void is always a full repre

sentation." When I say :

"

There is nothing,"

it is not that I perceive a"

nothing."I never

perceive except whatis.

But I have not perceived what I was seeking, what I was ex

pecting, and I express my deception in the

language of my desire. Or else I am speak

ing a language of construction, implying that

I do notyet possess

what I intend to make.

Let us abruptly forget these idols of prac

tical action and language. The becoming

of evolution will then appear to us in its

true light, as phases of gradual maturation,

1 Cf. the discussion on existence and non-existence in chap. iv.

of Creative Evolution.




rounded at intervals by crises of creative dis

covery. Continuity and discontinuity will

thus admit possibility of reconciliation, the

one as an aspect of ascent towards the future,

the other as an aspect of retrospection after

the event. And we shall see that the same

key will in addition disclose to us the theory

of knowledge.



VII

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE:ANALYSIS AND INTUITION

WE know what importance has been attached

since Kant to the problem of reason: it would

seem sometimes that all future philosophy is

a return to it; that it is no longer called to

speak of anything else. Besides, what we

understand by reason, in the broad sense, is,

in the human mind, the power of light, the

essential operation of which is defined as an

act of directing synthesis, unifying the experi

ence and rendering it by that very fact intel

ligible. Every movement of thought shows

this power in exercise. To bring it every

where to the front would be the proper task

of philosophy ; at least it is in this manner that

we understand it to-day. But from what

point of view and by what method do we or

dinarily construct this theory of knowledge?

The spontaneous works of mind, percep-

210



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 211

tion, science, art, and morality are the de

parture-point of the inquiry and its initial

matter. We do not ask ourselves whether but

how they are possible, what they imply, and

what they suppose; a regressive analysis at

tempts by critical reflection to discern in them

their principles and requisites. The task, in

short, is to reascend from production to pro

ducing activity, which we regard as suffi

ciently revealed by its natural products.

Philosophy, in consequence, is no longer

anything but the science of problems already

solved, the science which is confined to saying

why knowledge is knowledge and action

action, of such and such a kind, and such and

such a quality. And in consequence also rea

son can no longer appear anything but an

original datum postulated as a simple fact, as

a complete system come down ready-made

from heaven, at bottom a kind of non-tem

poral essence, definable without respect to

duration, evolution, or history, of which all

genesis and all progress are absurd. In vaindo we persist in maintaining that it is originally

an act; we always come round to the fact that

the method followed compels us to consider

this act only when once accomplished, and when

once expressedin results. The inevitable con-



A NEW PHILOSOPHY

sequence is that we imprison ourselves hope

lessly

in the affirmation of Kantian relativism.

Such a system can only be true as a partial

and temporary truth: at the most, it is a

moment of truth. "If we read the Critique

of Pure Reason closely, we become aware that

Kant has made the critique, not of reason

in general, but of a reason fashioned to the

habits and demands of Cartesian mechanism or

Newtonianphysics."

1

Moreover, he plainly

studies only adult reason, its present state, a

plane of thought, a sectional view of becom

ing. For Kant, men progress perhaps in rea

son, but reason itself has no duration : it is the

fixed spot, the atmosphere of dead eternity in

which every mental action is displayed. But

this could not be the final and complete truth.

Is it not a fact that human intelligence has

been slowly constituted in the course of bio

logical evolution? To know it, we have not

so much to separate it statically from its

works, as to replace it in its history.

Let us begin with life, since, in any case,

whether we will or no, it is always in life and

by life that we are.

Life is not a brute force, a blind mechanism,

1 H.Bergson, Report of

FrenchPhilosophical Society,

meet

ing, 2nd May 1901.



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE

from which one could never conceive that

thoughtwould

spring.From its first

pulsa-s

tion, life is consciousness, spiritual activity,

creative effort tending towards liberty; that

is discernment already luminous, although the

quality is at first faint and diffused. In

other terms, life is at bottom of the psycho

logical nature of a tendency. But"

the es

sence of a tendency is to develop in sheaf-

form, creating, by the mere fact of its growth,

diverging directions between which its im

pulse will be divided."*

Along these different paths the comple

mentary potentialities are produced and in

tensified, separating in the very process, their

original interpretation being possible only in

the state of birth. One of them ends in what

we call intelligence. This latter therefore has

become gradually detached from a less in

tense but fuller luminous condition, of which

it has retained only certain characteristics to

accentuate them.

We see that we must conceive the wordmind or, if we prefer the word, thought as

extending beyond intelligence. Pure intelli

gence, or the faculty of critical reflection

and conceptual analysis, represents only one




A NEW PHILOSOPHY

form of thought in its entirety, a function, a

determination orparticular adaptation, the

part organized in view of practical action, the

part consolidated as language. What are its

characteristics? It understands only what is

discontinuous, inert, and fixed, that which has

neither

changenor

duration;it bathes in an

atmosphere of spatiality; it uses mathematics

continually; it feels at home only among"

things,"and everything is reduced by it to

solid atoms; it is naturally "materialist,"

owingto the

veryfact that it

naturally grasps"

forms"

only. What do we mean by that

except that its object of election is the

mechanism of matter? But it supposes life;

it only remains living itself by continual

loans from a vaster and fuller activity from

which it is sprung. And this return to com

plementary powers is what we call intuition.

From this point of view it becomes easy to

escape Kantian relativity. We are confronted

by an intelligence which is doubtless no

longer a faculty universally competent, but

which, on the contrary, possesses in its own

domain a greater power of penetration. It

is arranged for action. Now action would

not be able to move in irreality. Intelligence,

then, makes us acquainted, if not with all




reality, at least with some of it, namely that

part bywhich

realityis

a possible object ofmechanical or synthetic action.

More profoundly, intuition falls into analysis

as life into matter: they are two aspects of

the same movement. That is why,"

provided

weonly

consider the

generalform of

physics,we can say that it touches the absolute."

l

In other terms, language and mechanism

are regulated by each other. This explains at

once the success of mathematical science in

the order of matter, and its non-success in the

order of life.

For, when confronted with life, intelligence

fails."

Being a deposit of the evolutive

movement along its path, how could it be

applied throughout the evolutive movement

itself? We might as well claim that the part

equals the whole, that the effect can absorb

its cause into itself, or that the pebble left on

the shore outlines the form of the wave which

brought it."

2

Is not that as good as saying that life is

unknowable? Must we conclude that it is

impossible to understand it?

" We should be forced to do so, if life


2 Preface to Creative Evolution.




had employed all the psychic potentialities it

contains in making pure understandings;that is to say, in preparing mathematicians.

But the line of evolution which ends in man

is not the only one. By other divergent ways

other forms of consciousness have developed,

which have not been able to free themselvesfrom external constraint, nor regain the vic

tory over themselves as intelligence has done,

but which, none the less for that, also express

something immanent and essential in the

movementof

evolution."

By bringing them into connection with one

another, and making them afterwards amalga

mate with intelligence, should we not thus

obtain a consciousness co-extensive with life,

andcapable, by turning sharply

roundupon

the vital thrust which it feels behind it, of

obtaining a complete, though doubtless vanish

ing vision?>J1

It is precisely in this that the

act of philosophic intuition consists.:< We

shall be told that, even so, we do notget beyondour intelligence, since it is with our intelligence,

and through our intelligence, that we observe

all the other forms of consciousness. And we

should be right in saying so, if we were pure

intelligences, if there had not remained round

1Creative Evolution, Preface.




our conceptual and logical thought a vague

nebula,made of the

verysubstance at the

expense of which the luminous nucleus, which

we call intelligence, has been formed. In it

reside certain complementary powers of the

understanding, of which we have only a

confused feeling when we remain shut up in

ourselves, but which will become illumined

and distinct when they perceive themselves at

work, so to speak, in the evolution of nature.

They will thus learn what effort they have to

make to become more intense, and to expand

in the actual direction of life." Does that

mean abandonment to instinct, and descent

with it into infra-consciousness again? By no

means. On the contrary, our task is to bring

instinct to enrich intelligence, to become free

and illumined in it; and this ascent towards

super-consciousness is possible in the flash of

an intuitive act, as it is sometimes possible for

the eye to perceive, as a pale and fugitive

gleam, beyond what we properly term light,

the ultra-violet rays of the spectrum.

Can we say of such a doctrine that it seeks

to go, or that it goes"

against intelligence"?

Nothing authorizes such an accusation, for

limitation of a sphere is not misappreciation

1 Creative Evolution, Preface.




of every legitimate exercise. But intelligence

is not the whole of thought, and its natural

products do not completely exhaust or mani

fest our power of light.

Besides, that intelligence and reason are not

things completed, forever arrested in their

inner structure, that they evolve and expand,is a fact: the place of discovery is precisely

the residual fringe of which we were speaking

above. In this respect, the history of thought

would furnish examples in plenty. Intuitions

at first obscure, and only anticipated, facts

originally admitting no comparison, and as it

were irrational, become instructive and lumi

nous by the fruitful use made of them, and by

the fertility which they manifest. In order to

graspthe

complexcontent of

reality,the mind

must do itself violence, must awaken its sleep

ing powers of revealing sympathy, must ex

pand till it becomes adapted to what formerly

shocked its habits so much as almost to seem

contradictoryto it. Such a task, moreover,

is possible: we work out its differential every

moment, and its complete whole appears in

the sequence of centuries.

At bottom, the new theory of knowledge

has nothing new in it except the demand

that all the facts shall be taken into account:




it renews duration in the thinking mind, and

placesitself

at the point of view of creative

invention, not only at that of subsequent

demonstration. Hence its conception of ex

perience, which, for it, is not simple infor

mation, fitted into pre-existing frames, but

elaboration of the frames themselves.

Hence the problem of reason changes its

aspect. A great mistake has been made in

thinking that Mr. Bergson s doctrine mis

understands it: to deny it and to place it are

two different things. In its inmost essence,

reason is the demand for unity; that is whyit is displayed as a faculty of synthesis, and

why its essential act is presented as apper

ception of relation. It is unifying activity,

not so much by a dialectic of harmonious con

struction as by a view of reciprocal implica

tion. But all that, however shaded we sup

pose it, entails a previous analysis. Therefore

if we place ourselves in a perspective of intui

tion, I mean, of complete perception, the de

mand for reason appears second only, without

being deprived, however, of its true task: it is

an echo and a recollection, an appeal and a

promise of profound continuity, our original

anticipation and our final hope, in the bosom

of the elementary atomism which character-




izes the transitory region of language; and

reason thus marks the zone of contact between intelligence and instinct.

Is thought only possible under the law of

number? Does reality only become an object

of knowledge as a system of distinct but

regulated factors and moments? Do ideasexist only by their mutual relations, which

first of all oppose them and afterwards force

intelligence to move endlessly from one term

to another? If such were the case, reason

wouldcertainly

befirst,

as alonemaking

an

intelligible continuity out of discontinuous

perception and restoring total unity to each

temporary part by a synthetic dialectic. But

all this really has meaning only after analysis

has takenplace.

The demand for rational

unity constitutes in the bosom of atomism

something like a murmur of deep underlying

continuity: it expresses in the very language

of atomism, atomism s basic irreality. There

is no question of misunderstanding reason,

but only of putting it in its proper place. In

a perspective of complete intuition nothing

would require to be unified. Reason would

then be reabsorbed in perception. That is

to say, its present task is to measure and

correct in us the limits, gaps, and weaknesses



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE

of the perceptive faculty. In this respect not

a man of us thinks ofdenying

itits task. Butwe try with Mr. Bergson to reduce this task

to its true worth and genuine importance.

For we are decidedly tired of hearing"

Reason

"

invoked in solemn and moving tones, as

if to write the venerable name with thelargest

of capital R s were a magic solution of all

problems.

Mind, in fact, sets out from unity rather

than arrives at it; and the order which it

appears to discover subsequently in an ex

perience which at first is manifold and in

coherent is only refraction of the original

unity through the prism of a spontaneous

analysis. Mr. Bergson admirably points out*

that there are two types of order, geometric

and vital, the one a static hierarchy of rela

tions, the other a musical continuity of mo

ments. These two types are opposed, as

space to duration and matter to mind; but

the negation of one coincides with the posi

tion of the other. It is therefore impossible

to abolish both at once. The idea of disorder

does not correspond to any genuine reality.

It is essentially relative, and arises only when

we do not meet the type of order which we

1Creative Evolution, pp. 220 ff.




were expecting; and then it expresses our

deception in the language of our expectation,

the absence of the expected order being

equivalent, from the practical point of view,

to the absence of all order. Regarded in

itself, this notion is only a verbal entity, un

duly taking form as the common basis of twoantithetic types. How therefore do we come

to speak of a"

perceptible diversity"

which

mind has to regulate and unify? This is only

true at most of the disjointed experience em

ployed by common-sense. Reason, acceptingthis preliminary analysis, and proceeding to

language, seeks to organize it according to

the mathematical type. But it is the vital

type which corresponds to absolute reality, at

least

whenit is a

questionof the

Whole;and

only intuition has re-access to it, by soaring

above synthetic dissociations.



VIII

CONCLUSION

As my last word and closing formula I comeback to the leitmotiv of my whole study:

Mr. Bergson s philosophy is a philosophy of

duration.

[Let

us regard it from this point of view,

as contact with creative effort, if we wish to

conceive aright the original notions which it

proposes to us about liberty, life, and intuition.

Let us say once more that it appears as the

enthronement of positive metaphysics: positive,

that is to say, capable of continuous, regular,

and collective progress, no longer forcibly

divided into irreducibleschools,

"

each of

which retains its place, chooses its dice, and

begins a never-ending match with the rest."

1Introduction to Metaphysics in the Revue de Metaphysique

et de Morale, January 1903. Psychology, according to Mr.

Bergson, studies the human mind in so far as it operates

in a useful manner to a practical end; metaphysics repre-

223



A NEW PHILOSOPHY

Let us next say that until the present

moment it constitutes theonly

doctrinewhich

is truly a metaphysic of experience, since no

other, at bottom, explains why thought, in its

work of discovery and verification, remains in

subjection to a law of probation by durable

action. We have nowonly

to show how it

evades certain criticisms which have been

leveled against its tendencies.

Some have wanted to see in it a kind of

atheist monism. Mr. Bergson has answered

this point himself. What he rejects, and

what he is right in rejecting, are the doctrines

which confine themselves to personifying the

unity of nature or the unity of knowledge in

God as motionless first cause. God would

really be nothing, since he would do nothing.

But he adds :

"

The considerations put for

ward in my Essay on the Immediate Data

result in an illustration of the fact of liberty;

those of Matter and Memory lead us, I hope,

to put our finger on mental reality; those of

Creative Evolution present creation as a fact :

sent the effort of this same mind to free itself from the

conditions of useful action, and regain possession of itself

as pure creative energy. Now experience, the experience of

the laboratory, allows us to measure with more and more

accuracythe

divergencebetween these two

planes

of life;

hence the positive character of the new metaphysics.



CONCLUSION 225

from all this we derive a clear idea of a free

and creating God,producing

matter and life

at once, whose creative effort is continued, in

a vital direction, by the evolution of species and

the construction of human personalities."

l

How can we help finding in these words, ac

cording to the actual expression of the author,

the most categorical refutation"

of monism

and pantheism in general "?

Now, to go further and become more pre

cise, Mr. Bergson points out that we must"

approach problems of quite a different kind,

those ofmorality." About these new prob

lems the author of Creative Evolution has as

yet said nothing; and he will say nothing, so

long as his method does not lead him, on this

point, to results as positive, after their man

ner, as those of his other works, because he

does not consider that mere subjective opin

ions are in place in philosophy. He there

fore denies nothing; he is waiting and search

ing, always in the same spirit: what more

could we ask of him?One thing only is possible to-day : to discern

in the doctrine already existing the points of a

1Letter to P. de Tonqu6dec, published in the Studies of

20th February 1912, and quoted here as found in the Annal*

of Christian Philosophy, March 1912.




moral and religious philosophy which present

themselves in advance for ultimate insertion.

This is what we are permitted to attempt.

But let us fully understand what is at issue.

The question is only to know whether, as has

been claimed, there is incompatibility between

Mr. Bergson s point of view and the religious

or moral point of view; whether the premisses

laid down block the road to all future devel

opment in the direction before us;or whether,

on the contrary, such a development is invited

by some parts at least of the previous work.

The question is not to find in this work the

necessary and sufficient bases, the already

formed and visible lineaments of what will

one day complete it. To imagine that the

religious and moral problem is bound to be

regarded by Mr. Bergson as arising when it

is too late for revision, as admitting proposi

tion and solution only as functions of a

previous theoretical philosophy beyond which

we should not go ; that in his eyes the solution

of this problem will be deduced from princi

ples already laid down without any call for

the introduction of new facts or new points

of view, without any need to begin from a

new intuition ; that his view precludes all con

siderations of strictly spiritual life, of inner



CONCLUSION 227

and profound action, regarding things in rela

tion to God and in

aneternal

perspective:such a view would be illegitimate and unrea

sonable, first of all, because Mr. Bergson has

said nothing of the kind, and secondly, be

cause it is contrary to all his tendencies.

After the

Essayon the Immediate Data

critics proceeded to confine him in an irre

ducible static dualism; after Matter and

Memory they condemned him as failing for

ever to explain the juxtaposition of the two

points of view, utility and truth: why should

we require that after Creative Evolution he

should be forbidden to think anything new,

or distinguish, for example, different orders

of life?

The problems must be approached one after

the other, and, in the solution of each of them,

it is proper to introduce only the necessary

elements. But each result is only"

tempo

rarily final." Let us lose the strange habit of

asking an author continually to do something

other than he has done, or, in what he has

done, to give us the whole of his thought.

Till now, Mr. Bergson has always con

sidered each new problem according to its

specific and original nature, and, to solve it,

he has always supplied a new effort of auton-




omous adaptation: why should it be other

wise for the future? I seek vainly for the

decree forbidding him the right to study the

problem of biological evolution in itself, and

for the necessity which compels him to abide

now by the premisses contained in his past

work.1

The only point which we have to examine

is this: will the moral and religious question

compel Mr. Bergson to break with the con

clusions of his previous studies, and can we

not, on the contrary, foresee points of gen

eral agreement?

In the depths of ourselves we find liberty;

in the depths of universal being we find a

demand for creation. Since evolution is crea

tive, each of its moments works for the pro

duction of an indeducible and transcendent

future. This future must not be regarded as

a simple development of the present, a simple

expression of germs already given. Conse

quently we have no authority for saying that

there is forever only one order of life, only

one plane of action, only one rhythm of dura

tion, only one perspective of existence. And

1 For Mr. Bergson, the religious sentiment, as the sentiment

of obligation, contains a basis of"

immediate datum "

render

ing it indissoluble and irreducible.




species, each individual, each function tends

to take itself as its end; mechanism, habit,

body, and letter, which are, strictly speaking,

pure instruments, actually become principles

of death. Thus it comes about that life is

exhausted in efforts towards self-preservation,

allows itself to be converted by matter into

captive eddies, sometimes even abandons it

self to the inertia of the weight which it ought

to raise, and surrenders to the downward cur

rent which constitutes the essence of material

ity: it is thus that Evil would be defined, as

the direction of travel opposed to Good.

Now, with man, thought, reflection, and clear

consciousness appear. At the same time also

properly moral qualifications appear: good

becomes duty, evil becomes sin. At this pre

cise moment, a new problem begins, demand

ing the soundings of a new intuition, yet

connected at clear and visible points with

previous problems.

This is the philosophy which some are

pleased to say is closed by nature to all

problems of a certain order, problems of

reason or problems of morality. There is no

doctrine, on the contrary, which is more open,

and none which, in actual fact, lends itself

better to further extension.



CONCLUSION 231

It is not my duty to state here what I

believe can be extracted from it. Still less

is it my duty to try to foresee what Mr.

Bergson s conclusions will be. Let us confine

ourselves to taking it in what it has expressly

given us of itself. From this point of view,

which is that of pure knowledge, I must

again, as I conclude, emphasize its excep

tional importance and its infinite reach. It

is possible not to understand it. Such is fre

quently the case: thus it always has been in

the past, each time that a truly new intuitionhas arisen among men; thus it will be until

the inevitable day when disciples more re

spectful of the letter than the spirit will turn

it, alas, into a new scholastic. What does it

matter!The

future is

there; despitemiscon

ceptions, despite incomprehensions, there is

henceforth the departure-point of all specula

tive philosophy; each day increases the num

ber of minds which recognize it ;and it is bet

ter not to dwell

upon

the proofs of several of

those who are unable or unwilling to see it.



INDEX

Absolute, the, 113.

Adaptation, value of, 106.

Analysis, 18; conceptual, 43;

contrasted with intuition,

52.

Appearances, 152.

Art, and philosophy, 57.

Atomism, 168.

Automatism, 98.

Automaton, of daily life, 86

seqq.

Being,

as

becoming,

88.

Brain, work of, 197.

Causality, psychological, 194.

Change, 182 seqq.

Common-sense, 15, 16, 18.

Concepts, analysis by and

functions of, 39; as symbols, 44; creation of, 46; as

general frames, 47; practi

cal reach of, 50; inferior

to intuition, 53; further dis

cussed, 175 seqq.

Consciousness, 97, 165, 185

seqq.

Conservation, 85; law of,

206.

Constants, search for, 50; rep

resented, 77.

Continuity, qualitative, 74.

Criticism, 36; of language,38.

Deduction, impotence of, 117.

Degradation, law of, 206.

Determinism, 82, 192; phys

ical, 85, 194.

Discontinuity, apparent, 78.

Disorder, 106.

Du Bois-Reymond, 203.

Duration, real, 80; perpetu

ally new, 82, 87; and

thought,168; and

time,189; pure, 193.

Dynamic connection, 51, 174;

schemes, 169.

Ego, encrustations of the,

71.

Eleatic dialectic, 177, 184.

Embryology, evidence of, 101,

204.

Evil, a reality, 123.

Evolution, 85; drama of, 95;

biological, 100; value and

meaning of, 103, 201; not

indispensable, 205; distin

guished from development,

105; as dynamic continuity,

107; as activity, 109; further

discussed, 121.

Existence, as change, 82.

Experience, 134.

Fact, 13.

Freedom, 83.

Free-will, 192.

Genesis, law of, 110.

Good, a reality, 123; a path,

229.

Habit, as obstacle, 107.

Heredity, 91.

Heterogeneity, 81.

Homogeneity, absence of, 74.

Huxley, 203.

Images, 27, 152.

Immediacy, 142, 154.

233



INDEX

Immediate, the, 23, 24, 37,

150.

Inert, the, 132.

Instinct, 112; is sympathy,116; contrasted with in

telligence, 117.

Intellectualism, distrusted,134.

Intelligence, 112; product of

evolution, 115; and instinct,

118; broad meaning of, 120,

213.

Intuition, 20; as starting-point, 48, 53; intransmissi

ble without language, 37;

aesthetic, 56; triumph of,

58; and duration, 140; and

analysis, 215.

Intuitional effort, 11; content,

19.

Kant, 62; his point of departure, 115; conclusions of,

157, 164, 212; escape from,214.

Knowledge, absolute, 35, 36;utilitarian nature of, 45;new theory of, 218.

Language, 10, 167; dangers

of, 173.

Laplace, 203.

Law, concept of, 104.

Liberty, 82; personal im

portance of, 84, 192 seqq.

Life, tendencies of, 90 seqq.;is finality, 108; is progress,

114; further discussed, 213,

215.

Limit-concepts, 180.

Materialism, 109.

Mechanism, psychological, 86;failure of, 94.

Memory, problem of, 8; per

ception complicated by, 33;

importance of, 79; racial,

92; planes of, 197; memoryof solids, 95.

Metaphor, justification of, 54-

55, 75.

Method, philosophical, 52.

Mill, Stuart, 186.Motor-schemes, 69

;mechan

isms, 72.

Mysticism, 113.

Non-morality, 120.

Nothingness, 106.

Number, 65.

Ontogenesis, 204.

Palaeontology, evidence of,101.

Parallelism, 66-67.

Paralogism, 196.

Perception, 25, 157; an art,

26; affected by memory,27; further explained, 28;

fulfilment of guesswork, 30;utilitarian signification, 30

seqq.; subjectivity of, 34;

pure and ordinary, 158;further discussed, 162 seqq.;relation to matter, 165; per

ception of immediacy, 153.

Philosophy, duty of, 118,

119; function of, 144 seqq.

Phylogenesis, 204.

Planes, of consciousness, 65.

Progress, and reality, 72.

Quality, 33; and inner world,

77, 207.

Quantity, and quality, 79,207.

Rationalism, 134.

Ravaisson, 137, 138, 197.

Realism, 136.

Reality, contact with, 11, 12,

16; a flux, 18, 33; recognition of, 33; absolute, 34;

elusive nature of, 51; per

sonal, 61; essentially qual

itative, 73; pure, 76; inner,

86; contrasting views about,

93; further discussed, 179.



INDEX 235

Reason, 21&. aeqq.

Relation, between mind and

matter, 68.

Religion, its place in philos

ophy, 124, 225 seqq.

Renan, 128.

Romanticism, 121.

Schemes, dynamic, 169 seqq.,

180.

Science, 20, 21; prisoner of

symbolism, 60; cult of, 128;

impotence of, 131.

Sense, good, and common-

sense, 149.

Space, 65.

Spencer, criticism of, 105;

success and weakness of,

203.

Spiritualism, 109.

Symbolism, 175.

Sympathy, 36.

Taine, 186.

Thought, methods of common,49.

Time, required by Mr. Berg-son s philosophy, 22; in

space, 80; and common-

sense, 188; and duration,189.

Torpor, 112.

Transformism, 101, 102; errors

of, 105.

Utility, 17; as goal of per

ception, 160.

Variation, 105.

Zeno of Elea, 176.

Zone, of feeling, 78 seqq.



B Le Roy, Edouard Louis

2430 Emmanuel Julien

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Henri Bergson

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